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Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy

Posted by Author | Filed under Web Servers

After spending some time searching for domains with domain name search engines, you find the perfect domain name to go with your website. You purchase the domain, under the assumption that it is available.

A few weeks later, you receive correspondence from a lawyer saying that the new domain has breached another business' trademark. You are now stuck with a potential law suit that may result in you losing your domain, your reputation and maybe even worse. However, with domain name arbitration, there is a possibility you can get out of such a situation and avoid any possible legal consequences.

What is domain name arbitration? It is a process where the complainant and the original holder of the domain name try to work out a reasonable agreement as to who actually has the rights to the domain name. The arbitration in itself is done through the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, (also known as UDRP). This is a special arbitration method set forth by the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) organization. The UDRP is used for most domain name disputes. It has the benefit of being less expensive than traditional litigation.

In order to start a domain name arbitration proceeding, a webmaster must go through a provider that has been approved by ICANN to handle such disputes. Once the arbitration begins, the provider will start by determining if the complainant has merit in their claim. They will do this by seeing whether the domain name in question is similar to a trademark or domain set forth by the claimant.

The provider will then establish what rights the claimant has to the title along with whether or not the domain was chosen accidentally or with the intention of taking advantage of the claimant's brand popularity. If the provider finds that the domain name was chosen in bad faith, the domain name will be transferred to the claimant. Otherwise, the original owner will be able to keep the disputed domain.

If either party is not satisfied with a domain name arbitration proceeding, they can challenge the findings in a regular courtroom. An example of this happened with Robert De Niro, when he tried to claim the rights to any domain containing the phrase 'Tribeca.' De Niro is still in court trying to retain the rights to Tribeca.net, which has been claimed by another person.

In conclusion, domain name arbitration is a convenient alternative to avoiding taking a domain dispute into a courtroom. There is the opportunity to go to court if either side feels an arbitration isn't fair. Yet, for most webmasters, the decisions made by the UDRP panel are good enough for them, since getting their consul is a lot cheaper than going to a judge.

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Tags: domain, domain name arbitration, domains
No Comments » | August 10th, 2010

What Are Domain Names?

Posted by Author | Filed under Web Servers

Without a domain name, websites are specified by an IP address. What is an IP address? It is an identifier that is used by computers to determine the location of a server or website. However, for humans, an IP address, (which is expressed in a numerical format), can be difficult to read. This is where domains are useful. With a domain, Internet users can locate a web site through more user-friendly words or phrases. And although numbers can be a part of a domain name, they usually do not make up all of it, like what is seen with an IP address.

A domain consists of several parts. The first part is known as the protocol. The protocol lets the browser know what the domain is going to point to. This will usually be 'http', which means the browser can expect to locate a hypertext document. In layman's terms this means webpage. In the rare cases the URL is not 'http'; it may be 'ftp' instead', which means file transfer protocol. A webmaster would use ftp if they would like visitors to download files from their server.

The second part of the domain name will be the subdomain. An example is "ftp", which means "file transfer protocol." If a website consists of more than one server, the subdomain helps to identify the specific server to connect to.

The subdomain is followed by the actual domain name, which can be a combination of letters, numbers or phrases. A good domain will be short, memorable and search-engine friendly. In fact, good webmasters tend to concentrate more on a domain's effectiveness with SEO, (or Search Engine Optimization), than they do its creativity. To do this, they make sure to choose a domain name that has a widely searched word.

The final portion of the domain name has what is known as an extension. This lets the Internet user know a little bit more about the web site's origins. For example, take .com, the most commonly used domain extension. It stands for 'commercial', and was originally intended for organizations in that vein. However, the extension is now used by virtually everyone looking to create a web site. And this is for good reason, since most Internet users will think about the .com before they would think about .org, .biz or .net. Yet, don't think the other extensions can't become memorable either. Consider Wikipedia.org which is a wildly popular website despite its .org extension.

Domain name extensions can also specify which country a web site is from. An example are country-based extensions such as .fr, (which stands for France), or .au (which stands for Australia). They can also be based around states, such as .ca, (which stands for California). Both can serve as wonderful tools for localized Internet marketing.

To get a domain, a person can either: 1) get one from their web hosting company, provided they offer that service or 2) get one from a separate domain name company. Price-wise things will vary with both options, though typically the cost will range from $6.50 to $35.

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Tags: domain, domains, Web Host, Web Hosting
No Comments » | June 27th, 2010

Choosing a Domain Name That Will Brand Your Website

Posted by Author | Filed under Make Money

You may be asking yourself "How do I start my own website?". Well, for starters: One of the best things you can help yourself with in your domain name choice is to develop a strategy and plan of attack. One of the best things you can do for your fledgling website is to bestow it with an appropriate, catchy, easy to remember domain name. Good search engine optimization, or SEO, begins with domain name selection. Not to mention your positioning and branding with your customer.

What if someone already owns the domain name you covet? Can you still get it? It's Possible. It's possible, but with conditions to consider. However, with a little luck and enginuity you can still possibly register that coveted domain name even if someone has beaten you to the punch. Instead, let's check out some alternative strategies to get the domain name you want:

Hyphenated Names Sometimes it is a good strategy to just take the same domain name and hyphenate it as in turning bobsautoparts.com into bobs-auto-parts.com. Is it always the best strategy? Maybe, maybe not. If you want a domain name that is already taken by someone else and is already a well known, well traveled website, this might be a bad move, because users already familiar with the original domain name will just type the original, non-hyphenated version into their web browser, and end up not at your site but at your competitor's site. Not the desired result! Also, the longer the name you have chosen, the more tedious and error prone it becomes for the surfer to type in the name correctly, again foiling the chances that they will end up at your website. So, the shorter the better. Hyphenating a domain name might be a good strategy for you in the following scenario: Let's say the domain name you want is taken, and the current owner is not willing to give it up. After researching it you find that there is no website published under the domain name, or perhaps there is but it is poorly designed and gets very little traffic. In a case like that hyphenating the domain name might make sense and in fact could be a wise strategy. But be careful: the last thing you want is to cause internet domain name confusion because you have decided on a domain name registration that is so close to a major competitor's name that you end up losing business to them.

Longer or Shorter? Domain names can be up to 67 characters long. At 63 characters, thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com claims to be the longest domain name in the world, and it may very well be. Can you envision anyone wanting to type it into their browser? My website is www.StartYourWebsiteToday.com and has a domain name that tells what kind of website you will be surfing to. Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking. You will want to definitely keep the name as short and sweet as possible, but at the same time let the visitor know what to expect when he surfs to your website. Keep it as short as possible.

Brand Name or Generic Should you give your website a descriptive generic name or do you want to use a brand name? If your business is known by a brand name, and it is a well known name, of course it is the best possible strategy to try to register that domain name. For instance, Nike.com is a well known brand name site, although there is nothing in the domain name to suggest that it is a site about shoes. Still, Nike is such a well known brand name to the public that people automatically know what they will be shopping for when they get there. If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name. But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well. People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names. A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike. So if possible cover all the bases. You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better. A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one. To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine. So in conclusion, the first step in "how to start a website" is in the wise choice of your domain name.

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No Comments » | July 22nd, 2009

Choosing a Hosting Plan for Your New Website

Posted by Author | Filed under Make Money

Selecting a hosting plan is a critical step when you want to start up a website. In prior posts I discussed choosing a domain name and creation of web pages. Which brings the subject of hosting into play: Choosing a hosting plan is a primary step in launching your fledgling web presence.

Once you have created the pages for your website, now you want to publish it to the internet. To have your website seen on the internet you will need to choose a hosting plan. A hosting plan is different from a domain name. You own your domain name but you rent a hosting plan. In it’s simplest terms a hosting plan is paying a company to broadcast your website onto the internet. The key considerations for choosing a good hosting plan will be discussed here.

SERVICE The most important consideration is the level of service provided. Bells and whistles and fancy features will do you no good if you can't get customer service in a timely fashion. After you have published, or "gone live" on the internet, the last thing you want is for the website to go down and become unavailable to potential customers. Therefore should a problem occur it is important to select a hosting provider that is readily available and will resolve the issue in as timely a manner as possible.

UPTIME Does the hosting provider you are considering offer an "uptime guarantee? The better hosting providers will offer up to 99% uptime. That sounds great, but it does mean that your site could go down for 1% of the time, which means over 7 hours out of each month! If at all possible, choose a host guaranteeing up to 99.9% uptime.

SIZE How large will the website be? Most hosting providers set the pricing on their hosting plans according to the space taken up on their servers by the website. If your website will be media rich with videos or music or photo files, or a large e-commerce site with a lot of catalogue pages, you will have to take space into consideration as a criteria for choosing the right hosting plan.

LINUX OR WINDOWS Which operating system should your hosting plan use? This question has no relevance to the brand of operating system you are using on your computer. What programming language was used in the Web site design? For example, if you designed a website using ASP or ASP.NET, you'll need to find a Windows hosting plan. If you have a Web site that uses CGI or PHP, you'll need to get a Linux hosting plan. Note that if you are simply publishing a basic html website, the choice of hosting Operating system won't really matter as much until you get into more advanced languages such as PHP or ASP.

TRAFFIC How much traffic or how many visitors do you expect monthly? Most hosting providers sell their hosting plans on a sliding scale according to bandwith usage. The more visitors or traffic you expect on your site, the higher the bandwidth you will need, and the more the plan will cost. Usually the best way to proceed here is to start with a basic low bandwidth plan, and upgrade later as the traffic begins to flow to the website.

SHARED OR DEDICATED HOSTING The question of shared vs. dedicated hosting is really answered in a very simple way: A shared hosting plan is exactly as it sounds, and means that your website will be stored on a server along with lots of other websites. In this hosting format you generally have no ability to make changes to the resident software on the system, meaning you cannot change or upgrade the operating system, or the database management system, etc. You will have to work within the software structure provided by the hosting company. Dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting is different in the sense that you will have full control over the environment that your website resides in, and you will have the only access to that space. Dedicated server hosting gives you full control over setup of the operating system and auxilliary programs such as database management or shopping cart or database management software. Generally customer support will be low to non-existent, since this type of hosting is geared to the advanced user who will be using his own custom setup. The best advice I can give to the newbie is to use shared hosting at first, until you gain more experience and abilities and are ready to take the plunge into something as advanced as dedicated hosting.

At StartYourWebsiteToday.com our uptime guarantee is 99.9% and we offer 24/7 customer service. The hosting plans that are offered include a variety: shared hosting, virtual dedicated hosting, and dedicated hosting plans with either Linux or Windows operating systems for every need and budget ranging from the small personal website to large online multimedia sites to those interested in ecommerce website building. To review the options we offer, click HERE: Hosting plans.

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