Top Level Domains
 Top
level domain name selection rules have lost their validity
over the years with the dramatic increase in applications
for domain names. Therefore consideration should be given
to registering the same Domain Name under a variety of level
types.
Currently, the general public understands and relates to
.com.
Internet surfers understand and easily associate the .com
domain. Obviously thousands .com addresses cannot be provided
each without quickly running short of available names. In
2000 alone, over 80,000 domain names were registered. To respond
to this dramatic increase in top-level domains, the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
recently approved the release of new top level Domains, shown
at the right.
This should relieve some of the shortage for top level domains.
However, there may be some difficulty in getting web surfers
to become familiar with its use.
Sub-Domains
Sub-domains are those domain names which are under a top
level domain. For example: our web site mysterybooks.com
is a top level domain name. Should we choose to have an entire
web site dedicated to Sherlock Holmes, we might choose a sub-domain
of either mysterybooks.com/sherlockholmes, or
mysterybooks.com/~sherlockholmes or even sherlockholmes.mysterybooks.com.
What is the problem with this level of domain? Again, some
search engines do not include sub-domains in there searches.
Additionally, we would be "renting" server space
whoever owns mysterybooks.com. This space may be cheaper than
hosting our own top level domain, since the mysterybooks.com
folks are also renting to mysterybooks.com/~nancydrew, mysterybooks.com/~stephenking,
and myterybooks.com/~maybeyou. These are all worthy of consideration
when choosing your domain name.
However, success on the Internet has been demonstrated to
be associated with Top-level domains; specifically .com.
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