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>> Once you have decided what you would like your website to do,
the next step is to identify and register your domain name or web address.
When trying to identify the most appropriate domain names for
your websites There are a few issues that you need to consider.
Firstly, remember that many people trying to find your site will start by simply
typing your business name followed by .com.
So if that web address is available it's important to register it immediately.
Other domain suffixes such as .org, .net or
even the relatively new .travel are not as popular and thus far less valuable.
Don't forget the country-specific extensions, .fr for France, .de for
Germany, of the countries in which you are located or
in which you might be located in the future.
These can also be useful,
particularly when the .com that you would like is no longer available.
You should also considering registering common misspellings of your name.
For example, the hotel chain, Marriot International,
whose name is easily spelled incorrectly,
stressed the value of having registered Marriot with one R, one T, two Rs two Ts.
As well as many others.
A domain name can be up to 63 characters in length, can contain letters,
numbers and dashes, but cannot contain spaces or other punctuation marks.
They're allocated on a first come, first served basis within each domain.
The simplest way to check if the one that you want is still free is to use one of
the many domain name registration websites that are available on the web.
For example, here is godaddy.com one of the market leaders.
Just by entering a valid potential domain name we can instantly
see if our desired address is available and if it is, reserve it.
It's important to note that you don't actually buy a domain name.
You simply pay a fee to use it for a specific period of time.
One, two, five, ten years.
After which it goes back to the pool of available names, unless you choose to
renew it and pay another fee within the registration period.
If the domain name you want is already taken, as is very likely these days,
as much of the web real estate is already in use.
Then, you can use a service called Whois to show you the contact details of
the person who currently owns it and possibly try to buy it from them.
However, with good web addresses often changing hands for thousands or
hundreds of thousands of dollars, this may not always be feasible.
The fact that domain names can sometimes be worth massive amounts of money has
encouraged some people to speculatively register multiple domain names in
the hope that someone someday might want to use them.
A process known as cybersquatting.
As this has become a big problem for legitimate companies trying to establish
themselves in the online world, ICANN, the Internet corporation for
assigned names and numbers, the organization responsible for allocating
web addresses on the web, has introduced what's called a domain name dispute
resolution procedure to avoid protracted legal action over domain name ownership.
Thus when you have a trade name or trademark similar to a domain name and
particularly when the current owners have simply parked that domain name and
are not using it in good faith, in many cases you
could get possession of the disputed domain name cheaply and relatively easily.
Using this arbitration procedure costs much less then taking action for
trademark infringement, gives results in weeks instead of months and to date,
most disputes have been found in favor of the trademark holder.