WebAdmin 101A – Top Level Domains

3. Top Level Domains

What is a Top-Level Domain (TLD) and how does it affect your web site? Even if you have only dabbled in the role of web master, chances are you have run into some kind of reference about top-level domains. But what is a TLD anyway?

A top-level domain name refers to the very last part of a common Internet domain name. For example, in the domain name www.domain.com, the TLD would be classified as the “.com” part of the address.  It is usual to speak the TLD inclusive of the preceding period calling it “dot“, thus the example “.com” would be said as “dot com“.  Sometimes it is written the same way as it is spoken, especially if referring to one site within a company’s group of sites – for example, eBay.com is often referred to as “eBay US” or in the context of speaking about eBay, it might be named as “the dot com site” or simply “dot com” if the reference is clear and unmistakable.

Who Decides On Internet Top Level Domains?
TLDs are so familiar to us that most of us, even those who work as web masters, do not stop to think twice about them.  But, who decides on Top Level Domains?  Who made the TLD list?  Who is responsible for the TLD name creation? 

Most TLDs are created and assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).  This Internet Corporation currently classifies every top level TLD into three main categories.

The Three Categories Of The Top Level Domain 

• These include country code top-level domains (ccTLD). These are top-level domains that are used by a specific country or territory. An example of these top-level domains includes “.uk” for the United Kingdom and “.jp” for Japan.

• The second category of the top-level domains is the generic top-level domains (gTLD).  These are top-level domains used by a kind of organization.  Examples of generic top-level domains include “.com” and “.mil” and “.gov” domain names.  A subset of these generic top level domains are described as unsponsored top level domains, such as “.biz”, “.info”, and “.pro”.
• Finally, the third main category of top-level domains is infrastructure top-level domains.  These are a restricted use set and include extensions such as “.net“, “.web“, “.tv“, and “.ac“.  Each attempt to register these types of TLD are subject to scrutiny and verification of the registrant’s eligibility to own one.  For example, to use “.net“, it’s not enough to be a web hosting or connectivity service, there are stricter criteria involved.

Finding Affordable Top Level Domains (TLD)
If you are looking into building and maintaining your own web site, you will probably want to look into top-level TLD registration.  TLD registration is readily available on the Internet, and is relatively easy to find.   Most of the web hosting services in our webhosts list offer domain name registration and name server hosting. 

Some webhosts charge an annual, or two-yearly, fee for this.  Some include it as part of the web-hosting fee.  Others advertise that they will provide one or more domain names free of charge – Hostgator (also in our list) have a package that offers 75 domain names free, and yours forever, in their top level package.  I have even seen, the odd one or two, hosting services offering unlimited domain names free for life … but they sometimes mean free for the life of the contract you keep paying for, and if you cancel and change hosts, they keep the domain names for reselling – it pays to read the small print.

Maybe you are wondering: where can I find free hosting for my top-level domain?  Generally speaking you can’t – it’s self-defeating for the webhost, and any webhost that offered it would not remain in business for very long.  Providing servers for web hosting is an expensive operation – both in terms of intitial capital costs, and in terms of long-term maintenance and upgrading of hardware and infrastructure, plus connectivity to the Internet. 

However, what you can do, is to look for a hosting service with TLD registration service, that has an affiliate programme and will offer to pay your affiliate earnings into your hosting account “fund”.   Again, some of the hosts in our webhosts list provide this type of arrangement, but please check carefully as some of them only provide traditional affiliate payments via cheque or PayPal etc. and not into your hosting account.  Decide if you want to make money, or maybe have your hosting paid for by referring customers, before you sign up with a host that offers affiliate programs, if those are a prime criteria for you.

Using affiliate programs, people clicking on links in your website and emails, then buying hosting from your provider, earn you money that pays for your hosting without you having to pick, pack, or ship anything, and without you having to do any accounting or payment handling.  That’s about as near as it gets to “free” hosting for TLD websites.  If you’re a successful affiliate marketer, you could even be earning substantial income from such activity, in addition to having your hosting paid for.

There are many Internet TLDs out there, from the most expensive top-level domain packages, that include hosting and web design, to cheap TLD registration-only services - which one is right for you?  Luckily, finding a cheap TLD is also relatively easy these days, but sometimes, you truly get what you pay for. 

There are many web sites that specialize in affordable and even free TLDs as explained above, but you need to look at the total package, not just the price.  There are some convincing arguments to say that you should register your domains with one company, and your hosting with a different company.  That way, if your webhost does something that “upsets” you, and you then want to move hosts, they cannot hold your domain name to ransom.  More about this later, in WebAdmin 101-B7 (Transferring Domains).

Off-Topic, but ….. What might your hosts do to upset you? 

Well, this year (2008) one of the big issues is going to be webhosts changing some of the core software on their servers.  Currently, many people are hosting TLD websites with webhosts running PHP 4.x.x but support from the open-PHP source group expires this year, and most hosts will migrate to PHP 5.x.x, which will “break” some websites due to code function and grammar differences between versions 4 and 5 of PHP.  A similar problem will surface this year with the popular MySQL database engines used by webhosts, and possibly with the UNIX / LINUX core operating system used for servers.  I’ll be looking at this more carefully in WebAdmin 102.

If you’re going to be developing web sites that are ecommerce, forum, blog, or similarly interactive-functions biased.  You need to check which of these your intended host is using, and what their upgrade path and timescale contains.  Then cross reference with the developers of the softwares you intend to use on your site.

Tomorrow, I’ll take a look at sub-domains and try to demystify them.
If you have any questions about today’s unit, please add them to the comments below.

Ed

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