A domain name is a bit like your physical address in that it’s how people find you out there on the World Wide Web. That’s why we call the bar at the top of a web browser the address bar – it’s where you enter a domain name to find a website.

If a domain name is like your address then the server your website is hosted on is like the physical building. When you create a website, you set your domain name to point to your server so that if people want to find your website, they can enter your domain name and it’ll take them straight there. Without a domain name, visitors would have to enter the IP address (e.g. 87.249.281.92) of your server.

Pretty much every website that you visit uses a domain name. Google.com is a domain name, for example. Facebook is the name of the website and Facebook.com is their domain name.

Domain names come in all shapes and sizes, but the one thing that they all have in common is that they’re made of two parts – the label (i.e. ‘Hostinger’) and the top-level domain (i.e. ‘.com’). A huge variety of top-level domain extensions are available, from country codes (i.e. ‘.co.uk or .de’) to specific codes for sectors like .gov for government organisations and .edu for educational institutions.

On top of that, with over 330 million registered domain names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages the overall architecture of the domain name system, recently recognised the need for a new type of domain name. Because of this, they announced a whole heap of new generic top-level domain extensions (gTLDs), from .bike and .clothing to .guru and .ventures.

The result is that there’s a huge amount of variety out there when it comes to choosing a domain name, but at the same time it can be difficult to find the right one for you or your company. It’s a big decision – and potentially one of the biggest you’ll ever make. And while you can change it later if you need to, it’s usually best not to if you can avoid it.

When you register a domain name from an approved registrar (like Hostinger), you effectively secure the rights to use that domain name for a set period of time.

When you’ve registered your domain name, the next step is to point it to the server which hosts your website. Note that it can also take up to 72 hours for any changes you make to propagate, which is a fancy way of saying that different internet providers from around the world take time to update their records.

The good news about owning a domain name is that you’re able to associate it with other services, such as email addresses. You can also create subdomains (i.e. http://subdomain.yourname.com) and set up redirects and forwarders. You can even buy multiple domain names and forward them all to the same website.

Domain names are also interoperable, which means that you’re not usually limited to the provider that you bought from. In the same way that you can change your hosting provider, you can also migrate your domain name.

There are several reasons for this, the most obvious being that it’s good for branding. Nothing looks more unprofessional than a brand that hosts its website at brandname.wordpress.com. This is because as a general rule, the websites that buy and maintain a domain name tend to be those that are more reputable and more established.

But your domain name is so much more than that. Often, the reason why people start a website in the first place is so that there’s something they have full control over. When you use social networking sites or free blogging providers, or even if you make a living selling on Amazon and eBay, you’re fully reliant on those other sites. If they change their terms of service or the service goes down completely, you’re in trouble.

When you’ve registered a domain name, though, you don’t have to rely on anyone else. That domain name belongs to you and you alone, and you have full control over what you do with it. You can control any associated email addresses, determine which server the site accesses and even sell it or transfer ownership if that’s what you want to do.

Meanwhile, the status of your domain name has a direct influence on your website’s position in search engine results pages (SERPs). Older domain names tend to take priority over newer ones, and at the core of every search engine is a citation model. This means that they determine how influential your website is based on the influence of the links that point towards it – so if you don’t own your domain name, any links that you earn will be giving their value to someone else.

This is a tricky one with no concrete answer. The good news is that you can register multiple domain names, and so it’s usually a good idea to do that for every domain name that you think of. That way, no matter what happens, you own it.

To get started, you’ll want to use our domain checker so that you can look up the availability of your domain name including each of the popular extensions. As a default, you should start by entering your company name – or, if you’re launching a blog site, the name of the blog. If that’s available as a .com address then the decision is pretty much made for you. Go ahead and register it.

Unfortunately, that’s not always easy because of the sheer number of domain names that have already been registered. You’re unlikely to find a dictionary word as an available .com domain, for example, and so you’ll need to be more creative. This is where that domain checker will come in super useful, because you’ll find yourself entering all sorts of combinations until you find something that’s available.

As a general rule, the best domain names are memorable and easy to spell, and many of the most popular companies named themselves by merging two words together (like YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.). Try different words in different combinations until you find something that’s available.

While you’re at it, it’s also a good idea to check whether your domain name is available as a username on the most popular social networkings sites. If it is, register there as well, even if the account is only a placeholder. The last thing you want to do is to create a super successful website and to find that your fans and followers have hijacked the username before you could take it.

Finally, remember that you can always buy multiple domain names and point them to the same site. This comes in useful if you’re not sure whether to buy the .com or the .us name, for example, or if you’re worried that people might misspell it. Be creative!

Once you register a domain name, you own that domain for the length of time that you specified, although you can potentially sell it or to transfer ownership to someone else.

The good news, though, is that if you want to buy a new domain name and to use that one instead, that’s not a problem. You’ll simply need to follow the same steps you followed when you purchased your first domain name and point the new name to your webserver.

Unfortunately, that’s not always easy because of the sheer number of domain names that have already been registered. You’re unlikely to find a dictionary word as an available .com domain, for example, and so you’ll need to be more creative. This is where that domain checker will come in super useful, because you’ll find yourself entering all sorts of combinations until you find something that’s available.

Finally, while it’s true that you can change your domain name, it’s best not to make a habit of it. After all, the more you use your domain name, the more powerful it becomes. Every time you change it, you lose a bit of the value that you’d worked hard to instill in the old domain name.

The minimum length that you can register a domain name for is a year, but you can also extend your registration to three years if you’d like to own it for longer.

On top of this, we encourage you to renew domain name. You will get notifications via email when it’s time to renew the domain name. We also allow you to set up auto renewal so that as long as your payment method is still valid, your domain name registration will automatically be renewed at regular intervals.

This depends upon the nature of your question. When it comes to the domain checker, you don’t need to add www in front of the domains that you search for.

When it comes to how you stylise your URL once you’ve bought it, it comes down to personal choice, although whichever you go with, you should make sure that it’s always consistent. If your website resolves at both http://www.yourname.com and http://yourname.com, it’s effectively treated as two different websites.

Historically, websites included www in front of the domain so that when their URLs were included on packaging, posters and other offline marketing materials, people knew that it was a ‘World Wide Web’ address. Nowadays, though, the internet is so ubiquitous that it’s no longer really necessary to include the www, and many people argue that removing it makes it easier for people to remember web addresses.

Domain checker usually works best if you start out with a list of potential site names in mind to begin with. Don’t worry about the extension (i.e. .com) too much – just list out the names and have them at hand so you can check different variations to find one that’s available.

Let’s say you’re searching for ‘yourexamplesite’ as a potential domain name. When we pop that into the domain name checker search box and click ‘check it’, we get a response to say that ‘yourexamplesite.xyz is available’. Beneath that, it shows us that while yourexamplesite.com is taken, it’s available as a number of other extensions including yourexamplesite.org and yourexamplesite.net.

But here’s where it gets interesting. As well as simply checking the term that you entered, the domain checker will also offer up suggestions. With the example above, we get ‘yes.it’ and ‘yoexsi.com’, both of which could make for interesting alternatives. We often find that the suggestions prompt new ideas and that even if people don’t go with the exact domain name that’s suggested, they end up with a variant.

You can use domain checker to look up as many domain names as you want, so don’t be afraid to be creative. And don’t forget that once you find the ideal domain name.

Good news: there are no special requirements to register a domain name with us. In fact, we’re open to everyone – you included!

That said, we’ll ask for certain information throughout the registration process to make sure that we have your contact details on file in case of any problems. You’ll also need a valid payment method to pay for your domain name.

You don’t have to be an existing customer of ours if you want to use Hostinger’s domain checker and register a domain name. You can point a domain name that you register with us to hosting that you own elsewhere. However, we usually find that it’s often best (and more convenient) to keep everything in a single place. That’s why we offer both hosting and domain name registration services.

TLD stands for ‘top-level domain’, and it’s used to refer to the last part of a web address after the final dot. Examples include .com, .gov and .org. You can’t have a website without a TLD, and every domain name is made up of a label (i.e. hostinger) and a TLD (i.e. .com).

The great thing about TLDs is that they usually tell you something about the site that they point to, with the exception of .com which originally meant ‘commercial’ but which is now used by pretty much everyone. Other examples include .org (organisation), .edu (education) and .gov (government).

TLDs can be split into two further categories: country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

Not long at all! In fact, we offer instant domain name registration and activation so you can be sure that your new domain name will be ready to use straight away.

Better still, we’ve made the registration process as quick and painless as possible. It takes just a couple of minutes to register a domain name.

Hostinger offerers a free domain name with premium and business hosting plans. You can get started with web hosting and a free domain name for just $3.45/month. So once you’ve used the domain checker to settle on the perfect domain name, don’t delay – sign up today and snatch it up!

If the domain name that you want is already taken then your best bet is to look at minor variants. For example, perhaps you can add another word to the name or you can switch one word out for another. Perhaps you can register it using a different extension, such as by using a ccTLD instead of the .com domain.

Another option is to hyphenate, so instead of using mywebsitename.com you could try my-website-name.com. Just be careful, though – the last thing you want to do is to cause confusion by having a name that’s too similar to someone else’s.

Finding the right domain name requires a little bit of art and a little bit of science. It also often takes patience and a lot of trial and error. But that’s okay too. Remember, the right domain name is out there, somewhere. You just need to keep searching around until you find it.

Privacy protection is sometimes called WHOIS protection because it hides certain information about a domain name’s owner that would otherwise be discoverable through a WHOIS lookup.

WHOIS is an international organisation that stores and displays data about domain names and their registrars, including when they were registered, when they expire, who registered them and where the domain names are pointing.

This means that anyone can enter a domain name into the WHOIS database and retrieve the information. Privacy protection is an optional extra which allows you to combat this if you’d prefer to remain anonymous.

Privacy protection isn’t for everyone, of course, but if you’d prefer to replace your name, address, phone number, email address and business name with a set of generic, non-identifiable information, then perhaps it’s the route for you.

Let’s take a look at the similarities first: they’re all gTLDs (generic top-level domain names) that are available for public registration. That means that as long as nobody else has registered the specific domain name that you’re looking for, you should be able to get it with any of these extensions.

Each of the gTLDs has a slightly different meaning, and so it’s usually best to pick the one that’s most relevant to your website. .com domains are usually used for commercial purposes, such as for an online store or a business site, although they’re increasingly being used by default as they imply a certain amount of trust. .net domains were originally used by networking companies (such as internet service providers) but are now also multipurpose.

.org is still largely used as it was originally intended, as a gTLD for charities, communities and local organisations. .info, meanwhile, is aimed at information-based websites such as wikis and tutorial sites.

With all of these gTLDs, there’s a certain amount of wiggle room. There’s no rule that says you have to use one type of domain name or another – and no test that you have to pass if you want to register one. Think of them as guidelines rather than rules – and feel free to break them if it allows you to snatch up the perfect domain name.

Your domain name is like your address and your web hosting is like the house that you live in. If you want to launch a website then you’ll need both a domain name, which people can use to find you, and a web host, which stores the actual website.

Domain names and web hosting have a sort of symbiotic relationship, like software and hardware or yin and yang. While it’s technically possible to have one without the other, they work best when they’re working together, which is why many web hosts offer domain name registration and why many registrars offer hosting.

You can separate the two, of course, and register a domain name through one company and buy hosting from another. But it’s usually more time-consuming – not to mention more expensive – so why bother?