Probably I don’t have to explain why a domain might be useful … Fun fact: At the time of writing there are just about 1.135.214.443 (1.14 billion!) websites/domains registered.
Examples
Your next …
- project
- blog
- affiliate-business
- personal vita …
so many reasons to have domain.
How
One basic thing you need to know to differentiate is 1) Web-Hosting and 2) Domain Registration. Most companies in the field will offer you both services.
1) Web-Hosting:
The main part of a typical web-hosting offer is the data-storage (in the web). Basically you have some amount of Data-Package (e.g. 100GB) where you place your files for your website. Other useful things a web-hosting-package will typically offer:
- Traffic: Also measured in Megabytes or Gigabytes the included traffic allows a certain amount of connections to your domain until your hosting-plan will get more expensive.
- Email: Most Hosting-Packages also come with a Email-Server, so that you can send/receive Emails from yourname@yourdomain.com
- MySQL-Databases: A very common database that can host your data. For example a WordPress-Installation needs one MySQL-Database to work.
2) Domain Registration:
Most Hosting-Providers will also offer you domain registration as a part of their offer but you can also register a domain on its own. Think of your domain as a kind of address like your home address. You’ll have to associate your address to you as a person, this service is the domain registration.
You’ll pay either a monthly or yearly fee. Depending on the domain-ending the price varies. Good Top-Level-Domains (TLDs) that are not registered yet, like .com, .org or country-specific domains like .de, are harder to find.
You got inspired to look for your own domain? A quick way to check for many TLDs is domai.nr or hover.com
Tipp:
How to name your domain? There are a couple of things to consider. I think this video by moz.com (Experts on Search Engine Optimization) could be pretty helpful.