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Registering a Domain Name, Part 1. Decide on the Ending First!

The very first thing to do with a domain name is to decide on the domain name ending FIRST. The most popular choices in Ireland are .ie, .com and .co.uk - the domain name ending (shown in red below) is more correctly known as the TLD.

Choose a domain name ending (TLD) first!Img 1. the first thing to do is to decide on a domain name ending (TLD)

Understanding TLDs

If you want a more granular understanding of TLDs, please refer to the article What is a TLD?

Points to consider when choosing a TLD

  1. Legalities. Your choice of domain name ending (TLD) will likely affect your legal rights (Find out why)

    There are 2 types of TLD - generic such as .net, .com and .org. There are also country specific TLDs like .ie and .co.uk. Most generic TLDs are controlled by US law and most country specific TLDs are controlled by the laws of the country concerned. There is a governing body called ICANN but they don't deal with individual disputes. If you have a fight on your hands with a .co.uk domain then you gotta play by the British rules. Conservative as the Irish are, there is a lot of legal protection with a .ie domain.

  1. Cost. Different domain name endings (TLDs) have different costs. The generic TLDs tend to be cheaper than the country specific ones. (Important!)

    If you buy a .ie domain from a reseller (read: most every webhost in Ireland) you'll get it for about a third of the price than if you buy direct from the Irish Registrar (IEDR), and you're safe to do this because under Irish law you're well protected and no-one can take the mick. Go to your irish webhost of choice, register your .ie domain name and buy your webhosting all together in the one go. Simples. Find a list of irish webhosts here.

    It's an altogether different story for almost all the other TLDs. NEVER, I repeat, NEVER buy a .com/.net/.org/.co.uk etc from a reseller. Register it in your own name with an ICANN approved top level registrar. A .com is ten bucks. Pay it and have peace of mind. godaddy.com is a popular choice, as is blacknight, Ireland's only ICANN approved top level registrar.

    Once you've registered your domain then buy your webhosting without a domain name (choose: I already have a domain and/or I will update my own nameservers). Your webhost will send you the nameservers in the welcome email. Then go back to your registrar's login and point the domain name to your webhosting (they all have help files showing you how to add your new nameservers - its easy). Don't be tempted by free .coms and whatever else - it's just not worth it. I've dug quite a few businesses out of this mess - meaning they've discovered that the controller of their domain name is the reseller and not them.  There is no legal come-back and don't kid yourself that there is unless you've got deep pockets or mummy is a partner in a major legal firm. More often than not, we've just had to abandon the .com and start anew. With any TLD other than the .ie: the person who first registers the domain has total control - make sure it's YOU.

  1. Target Audience. A country specific TLD can be important if your target audience is in a particular country. Your audience understands the domain name ending and so does Google. If your target audience is mainly Irish, then register a .ie. 
  1. Eligibility. Certain domain name endings (such as .ie and .edu) have quite strict rules of eligibility associated with them. (See more)

    Unlike the other TLDs where you can have almost name you want provided it's available, under the .ie rules you need to prove that your business has the right to use the name you want. If you're registering the .ie with a webhost they'll tell you what proof you need to produce and this may need to be faxed to the Irish Registrar. You can take a look at the IEDR (Irish Registrar) rules on naming here. There is more flexibility than there used to be, but you'll have an uphill battle to convince them that your desire for the domain superman.ie relates to your registered business name of O'Sullivan Plumbers.

Myth: Registering the same domain with multiple TLDs just gotta have more oomph!

There are only 2 valid reasons to register multiple TLDs of the same domain - eg xxx.com, xxx.co.uk, xxx.ie, xxx.net, etc

  1. You want to prevent the competition from using these domains and diluting your brand - fair enough, but normally only one variant will be active, and the rest will be "parked" (dormant). The point here is that they will be unavailable to the competition.
  2. You need the website to appear as if it's local - in which case you purchase and develop a separate .co.uk site because you want it to appear to be a British business. Heck, why not? If your main business is in Ireland and the UK this is a good way to go - you'll have a .ie and a .co.uk site. Charge euro in one and sterling in the other. But if you have bigger plans, read on.

Serving content to different regions using ONE domain

Huge brand name websites may buy up a lot of TLDs to prevent brand dilution. However, many use only ONE TLD - often the .com version, to present content to different parts of the world. 

There are 2 main ways to use one domain to serve different regions. The first is using subdomains, the second is using paths - see the example below based on a hypothetical domain called example.com.

Table 1. serving different versions of example.com to different regions and languages
Region servedSubdomain methodPath method
Ireland ie.example.com www.example.com/ie/
Britain uk.example.com www.example.com/uk/
Europe, Middle East, Africa emea.example.com www.example.com/emea/
EMEA - German language version emea.example.com/de/ www.example.com/emea/de/
China ch.example.com www.example.com/ch/
Asia, Pacific and Americas apac.example.com www.example.com/apac/

Both these methods have the advantage over targetting individual country TLDs in that you can present to huge regions with just one variant of the website (like apac and emea). The Path method has the edge as far as I'm concerned because most Content Management Systems handle it better and Google Analytics is easier to set up and monitor.

Subdomains are difficult to use with 1 install of a Content Management System. They're also difficult to use for Analytics, especially if a lot of cross-linking between subdomains is used. For that reason I prefer to use subdomains for content that is totally different from the main website and has a different purpose altogether from the main content. So if you were selling software and you want a demo area for customers, then you could set up the software demo in a subdomain: demo.example.com. Another one often requested is a billing area where customers can log in and see a list of their invoices (and settle them) - eg. billing.example.com

Tying it all up

It can be a big decision - and the bigger your plans, the bigger the decision. However your success will be determined by your content and usability, not by the number of domains that you buy.