Choosing Your Website Address. Part One - Hard Rules.

When asked what website address an organisation can choose, the answer "anything you like" is of little help. Whilst it is true that there are few rules, some do exist.

Presented here in part one of this article is the current state of play with website addresses. Part two deals with best practice guidelines to choosing a good address for your website.

Website address extensions.

Website address extensions are found at the end of the website name. The most popular extension in the UK is the co.uk extension. This stands for a company in the UK and offers some clue to the visitor about the type of organisation you are.

The familiar dot between co and uk means nothing, they are used as a separator instead of a space because computers don't like spaces.

Other standard UK extensions are:

The org.uk extension which tells the visitor the website is an organisation in the UK and is suitable for charities and other non-profit making bodies.

The plc.uk extension does indeed stand for public limited company in the UK. This extension can only be registered by the plc who's company name corresponds with that particular website name. It is a harder name to register but is well worth the extra effort as it represents a standard not available to most organisations.

The ltd.uk extension stands for a limited company in the UK. As above this extension is only available to the single company, already registered for limited liability, whose name exactly corresponds with the website address.

The standard global extensions are:

The .com extension originaly intended for international corporations based in multiple countries, this extension has been diluted to the point of possessing no particular meaning. This is primarily due to the american public prefering to use .com on websites rather than co.us or us.com. It imparts no clue as to the website status as .com is in use for every type of website in existance. It does however, remain easy to both use and remember for visitors and is an excellent choice for a second website address.

The .org extension stands for a non-profit making organisation with an international presence or whose website is aimed at more than one country. Such extensions are often used on umbrella sites where the visitor is than asked to select a specific country or language.

The .net extension standing simply for internet, .net is an easy to use, generic extension. Like .com it is suitable for any type of website and is a good choice if the .com or co.uk is not available.

The .info extension is intended for sites offering information on any subject. Visitors expect that the website will provide at least some information for free.

The .biz extension indicates a business website, is suitable for most types of small company but is considered to relaxed and casual for blue chip companies at the moment.

Permitted characters.

The only characters allowed in a website name are letters, numbers and hyphens. No other special characters are allowed, this includes spaces. Website names are not case-sensitive, so yourname.co.uk is considered the same as YourName.co.uk.

Most search engines list website names in lower case so make sure the address is easy to read in lower case even if you intend to use capital letters on your business cards. Also, whilst domain names can be up to a maximum of sixty seven characters in length, it is highly advisable to avoid long names.

The governing body for .uk.

The body responsible for administrating the UK domain name extensions is Nominet. Should any dispute arise over the legal position of such a website address they have procedures which may be used to settle them.

Nominet is a non-profit making organisation, they are funded by membership fees and the website address registration fees. It is not necessary for you to become a member in order to register a website address.

Registration fees.

Whilst Nominet is the governing body it would be a mistake to pay for your website address fees directly with them. They will allow this but for individual payments the cost is £80 not including V.A.T for two years registration.

Nominet uses registration agents who carry out the process themselves. Nominet provide a huge discount to such agents which is passed on to their customers and it is highly recommended that your website name is registered through them.