Singapore Web Hosting Blog

just a quick note to let you know that on April 10 2007, ICANN approved price increases for 5 major TLD domain names, .com, .net, .org, .info, and . biz.

here’s the announcement:

http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg04682.html 

just received from our registrars that the price increases go into affect on October 12, 2007.

monopoly is really bad

rushing to make changes to our web pages…

i was reading a newsletter where the the author listed most well known domain deals in the past few years:

Amount Year Domain
12,000,000 - 2006 - sex.com
7,500,000 - 1999 - business.com
5,500,000 - 2003 - casino.com
5,000,000 - 2002 - asseenontv.com
5,000,000 - 1999 - korea.com
3,500,000 - 1996 - worldwideweb.com
3,350,000 - 1999 - altavista.com
3,300,000 - 1999 - wine.com
3,000,000 - 1999 - eshow.com
3,000,000 - 1999 - loans.com
2,750,000 - 2004 - creditcards.com

good domain name costs millions.

but good short crispy domain name is hard to find nowadays. in the past, i recommended clients to always consider keyword rich domain names when short one-or-two-word domain is not available.

for example, if webhosting.com.sg is taken, and yes it’s taken long time ago, go for singaporewebhosting.com, if singaporewebhosting.com is taken, you can even consider bestsingaporewebhosting.com. you get the idea.

the reason was, keyword rich domain name is descriptive and may help search engine ranking a bit. it’s long and ugly, but the problem is, the shorter ones are taken. since you have to get a long domain, why not make it keyword rich?

now things have changed. and i’ve changed my mind.

always go for a brandable domain name. something easy to read out loud, easy to type into the address bar, easy to remember, something short.

so instead of bestsingaporewebhosting.com, get, for example, i did not check availability of domain name below, hostingstudio.com.sg, wehost.com.sg, mysghosting.com, trustedsg.com, etc. or maybe your unique company name which does not include “web” or “hosting” at all.

why? provide clients convenience and quality service, not anything else. brandable domain name is good for visitors, and in the end will be good for your business.

to set up a web site, you need to have both domain name and web hosting account.

now you need to link the domain name to the hosting account on a web server, or say it more technically, change/point domain DNS to correct nameservers.

as mentioned in this post, domain name is just ownership by itself, you need to host web pages on a server and link/connect domain name and hosting account together. this is where DNS comes in.

DNS stands for Domain Name Server. the value in DNS is where/how all ISPs look for server location that’s hosting this domain name. in other words, when a visitor hits “http:www.yourdomain.com”, how his ISP (his Internet service provider, such as Singtel, StarHub, tec.) knows where to get the correct web pages? the ISP checks what’s in domain DNS.

the nameservers look like this:

Primary Name Server:
NS3.SINGAPOREWEBHOSTING.COM

Secondary Name Server:
NS4.SINGAPOREWEBHOSTING.COM

each of the nameservers are pointing to a unique IP address, which in turn is connected with certain server, in the case above, our Platinum server. this nameserver-IP-webserver relationship has been in all ISP’s database once we set up the server, so as end user clients do not have to worry about this part.

when ISP sees our nameservers as DNS under yourdomain.com, visitors’s browser will be directed to correct place - our Platinum server, and get the right web pages.

now, where to change this DNS stuff? answer is, with domain registrar. note, not with the hosting provider.

when you buy the domain name, the registrar (the one whom you buy domain name from) should give you a control panel to manage the domain. login to that control panel, you may see many options typically, such as “change registrant contact”, “change technical contact”, etc. look for “manage DNS”, or “change DNS”, or “change nameservers”, or something similar, then enter our nameservers there. don’t forget to “save changes” if there’s such button.

different registrars have totally different domain management interface, so nothing more i can describe the control panel.

if the registrar does not provide domain control panel (very rare though), ask them how to change DNS. not us, we have no further idea.

if you buy domain name from us, things are easier, we would have set it up for you already.

(our hosting plan does not include domain registration by default.)