General Advice
A registered domain name is essential if you want to trade on the Internet. A domain name that describes your business services or products or is your business trading name can bring more visitors to your web site and potential customers will have more confidence in your company knowing that you have your own domain name.

Many individuals are also realising the benefits of having their own personal domain name. You can change your ISP (Internet Service Provider) at any time and not have to change your email or web address.

Thousands of domain names are being registered every day and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a domain that has not been registered that suits your business. It is advisable if your desired name is available that you register it today, it may not be available tomorrow.

A valuable asset
With so many domain names being registered, good domain names are becoming a scarce resource and can become a very valuable asset. When you purchase a domain from Go4domain, we register the domain in your name, you can then sell the domain if you wish to the highest bidder (There may be a small charge payable to the naming authorities for some domain name types change of ownership details.), some domains are being sold for tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds that could have been registered with us for only £26 including web forwarding and POP3 email!

Web and email forwarding
When you register a domain with WebCity Web Hosting Services we can provide POP3 email accounts and web forwarding for just £16 for two years service.
 
Domain URL forwarding, this allows you to use free web space provided by ISP's and access it with your own domain address, an increasingly more popular option for domain forwarding is that multiple domains are being registered and forwarded to the same site.

Web / URL Masking option.
Users only see your registered domain name at the top of the page in the address box, not the true address of the page. This option is provided and can be disabled if required.

Email forwarding is also included with all our hosting and forwarding accounts , this allows you to use your registered domain name as your email address then all emails sent to this address are forwarded on to your existing email address. When you change ISP's, you can just update your forwarding option and use your new ISP without having to change your email address.

Registering a Domain Name
The two most common domain names in the UK are .co.uk and .com and can take the form of www.your-name.co.uk or www.yourname.com 

You can search for available domain names here, when you have found a domain that you want you can give your credit card details securely on-line or if you require any help, please telephone +44 (0)116 234 1414.

Choosing a name
We recommend when registering a domain name the you make it memorable and it is either close to your company name or describes your company services or products. It also common to register a number of different domain names that point to the same web site.

The advantage of this is that people may try to guess a domain name for the company they are searching for, also you may get multiple or a higher listing in search engines and directories that you register on, reaching more potential customers.
 
If you are a company with many different business avenues or products you may want different domain names to point to different parts of your web site.
 
General Limitations
Your domain name can only be registered if it is made-up of the following:

• Letters (a to z),
• Numbers (O to 9) and
• Dashes or hyphens (-) though not at the beginning or end of the name.
• A minimum of 3 and a maximum of 63 characters for .co.uk & .org.uk addresses. Two character domain names are only accepted if one is a number and one a letter.
• A minimum of 2 with a maximum of 67 characters for .com, .org & .net addresses.

Other rules and restrictions
For a .com or a .co.uk name, there are few rules, the name can be anything you want and they are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. You are recommended not to register domain names that are already trademarked i.e. coca-cola.com.

A .Itd.uk or .plc.uk name is a directly linked to the UK Companies House database, and we will require your company's registration number. A name registered under one of these domains can only be registered exactly as your company name. You may replace any ampersand characters (&) in your company name with the word AND.

Which Domain to register in
It is usual for a company trading in the UK to register a .co.uk address and those trading globally to register a .com address. It is recommended that you register both the .com and .co.uk in both instances - registering a .com does not stop someone else registering the same name under .co.uk, and vice-versa.

Still not answered your question? Please click here for support or telephone: +44(0)116 2341414