Domain Registration - How to Register A New Domain Name for Your Website - The rules for...
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The rules for domain names are simple - only letters, numbers or hyphens are allowed. Other than that, a domain name is limited to 70 characters, but you are advised to keep it as short as possible. Domain names can be upper or lower case - case is ignored by DNS but you can use a combination to make the name more recognizable. Since DNS is case-insensitive, yahoo.com can be advertised as YAHOO.COM.
Every domain name ends in a top-level domain (TLD) name, which is always either one of a small list of generic names (three or more characters), or a two characters territory code. There are several extensions available. The most common is .com - it has even entered common vocabulary as a way to express Internet activity - (I own a dot com business). Other extensions include .biz (for commercial sites), .org (for non-commercial organizations), .net (for organizations involved in Internet infrastructure) and .name (for personal names). There are also extensions with more specialized uses such as .museum, .aero, and .coop and are used exclusively by members of certain organizations. In addition to these common extensions, there can also be a country code extension such as .us (United States) or .uk (United Kingdom). The rules for using country extensions vary, so you need to check with your registrar to see if they are available to you.
All domains must be registered with a registrar that has been certified by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). There are hundreds of registrars and their prices vary considerably.
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