WTF-Websites

Word salad of different top level domains

MORE ON THE DOMAIN NAME

To return to the Process Summary click here.


In the process summary we discussed what a domain name is and why we need one. The domain name is made up of two pieces, as shown below:

Diagram showing the different parts of the domain name

The picture above has 2 examples of a web address, and you may notice that the first part of both is exactly the same, with only the last part being different. Specifically, address 1 ends in “co.nz”, and address 2 ends in “.com”. It is important to note that these are seen by browsers as 2 different addresses and can point to two totally different and unrelated websites. If the owner of “yourname” company wanted both addresses to point to their website, then they have to purchase both addresses and point both of them to where their website is hosted (webhosting). For example, we have both wtf-websites.com and wtf-websites.co.nz pointing to this website.

When choosing a domain name people usually focus on the hostname first as this is most important. The hostname typically is the business name, or reflects the purpose behind the website. The hostname can be anything you desire, as long as it is available to purchase and doesn’t contravene any rules.

The end part of your domain name is the top level domain (TLD), and can be country specific or generic. Some say that having the “nz” denotes that you are a local company, however many international companies buy the local nz version for their hostname, so it isn’t exactly accurate. The most common and “international” generic top level domain is certainly .com, however there are hundreds of other generic TLDs you can choose (the graphic at the top shows a few). If you are looking to serve customers from anywhere in the world then that is a good reason to consider going with .com. You can also specialize according to what your company does. For example, app software makers can use the TLD “.app”.

To avoid being swamped with choices we recommend chosing a TLD which is available for your preferred hostname, and if it happens that there is more than one TLD available (e.g. both .com and .co.nz are available) you can buy all, or choose the cheapest. We sell .com and some other TLDs at cost, that is, we don’t charge any mark-up. We do this as our main business is designing websites. You can search domain names to see if they are available and also prices here.

Note that we are not a registered .co.nz seller, so if you want that TLD you can easily find a seller through websearch. We recommend using Duckduckgo for searches as they do not curate or censor your websearch, do not sell your data, and do not keep your search records.

CHECK DOMAIN NAME AVAILABILITY

Feel free to check if your possible domain name is available here:

don't pay over $30 for your .co.nz domain name

A word about pricing. As mentioned we sell .com domain names at cost, and the price for a year (the minimum amount of time you can get a domain name for) is around $16 at the time of typing this up. However, in regard to the price for a .co.nz domain name please be careful! We’ve seen many companies charge $40 for one year, and claim that this is “cheap”. Frankly, it makes us angry to see it. We even found one site that claimed to have comparisons of .co.nz providers and gave their no. 1 recommendation to an off-shore provider charging $45 + GST for one year!!! The cheapest .co.nz domain name provider we found only charged us $22 for our .co.nz domain name for one year. They also included all the essential access required (other providers have the gall to charge extra for this on top of their crazy expensive price). If you can’t find this cheap provider just send us a message and we’ll point you in the right direction.

We hope that this helps you in your purchase of a domain name. If anything is unclear or you have further questions please feel free to contact us. We answer your questions for free, with no obligation to buy anything from us. We sincerely wish for your awesome success and are happy to help you along the path!

STEVE JOBS

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith

    GET IN TOUCH