Website (Domain Name) Registration

In order for your website to work properly on the Internet two things are required:

• A domain registration to establish the domain and show who it belongs to and where it is hosted; and
• A host or server to handle requests for web pages, email messages, and other information sent to that domain. 

When you register a domain name you are recording it in a central Internet database to establish ownership of it. The database is not a single database, but a collection of information maintained by the registrars and registries who manage domain name registrations. A domain name search will search this data and determine availability of the domain name. In most cases domain names are registered on a first-come, first- serve basis so once you have decided on a domain name, you’ll want to search and see if the name is already in use.

There are probably a number of online tools that do this (your web host probably has one), however, the one most commonly used is Name Registrars (http://www.nameregistrars.net/index.php). Below is an example of a Name Registrars search for the website Microsoft.com: