For many people who are new to web design, creating a website is as simple as coding your articles on abstract canvas art. However, designing a website has many steps, and they're all useless without the all important first step of securing a domain name for yourself. If you want to make your own website but you're not sure what a domain name is, why you need one, or how to go about getting one, this article should help point you in the right direction.

If we liken creating a website to building your own home, HTML tags would be like the wire cutters you use to do the interior work on your home, the home itself would be the website you designed, the land it sits on would be like the server space in which the site is hosted, and your domain name is the official address given to you by the city which allows everyone from the letter carrier to your friends and customers to find and visit the new building you have created.

Without a domain name, your website has no location on the internet that a web browser is able to find an access, therefore without a domain name, no one can visit your website. Even search engines, which use robot "crawlers" to explore websites and catalog their content, cannot list you in the results for searches on cosmetic dentistry in Toronto is you have no address that they can give their users. Therefore, if your website doesn't have a domain name, it basically doesn't exist.

To obtain a domain name, you must pay a yearly fee ranging from about $10 and up depending on how desirable the name is to keep the domain registered under your name. You can register a domain - even create a new one if the one you want doesn't yet exist - by visiting a registry company. There are many, such as Domains.com, GoDaddy.com, and Namecheap.com. However, make sure you are prepared to register the domain you search for immediately, as some companies will buy your cheating spouse cell phone domain and rent it back to you at a premium if they get the opportunity. For this reason, you must also be careful to renew your domains each year when they come due.

Make sure to put some thought into your domain name. It should be easy to remember and appropriate for a website belonging to a London emergency plumber for example. If your site is for a business, you should also use a .com or .ca domain.