Why Establish a Domain? For a nominal fee (currently as low as $7.95 a year, and renewable) you can setup a boilerplate global identity that will not change, even if you move from one hosting firm to another. This permits you to print and promote your web site's address on everything you use in your business or organization - in your letterhead, on business cards, on labels, tags, on the building, on entry doors, in changing rooms, in your e-mail signature file, on outbound Fax's… etc. This web address is called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or Domain Name. The second significant advantage of having a hosted domain is that numerous email addresses can be created that are based on your domain name like... info@yourcompany.com, sales@yourcompany.com, etc. These addresses can be redirected to any personal email address and will not change even if you decide to change your local dial-up Intenet Service Provider (ISP). Read... The (Domain) Name Game by Lee Creek October 15, 2001 to learn more about picking an effective domain name. When you finally decide to establish a domain... here are some basic rules and several things to consider carefully as you proceed. The valid characters in a domain name are alphabets, digits, and '-' (hyphens). The first character must be either a letter or a number. As of December 5th, 1999, you can register domain names up to 67 characters long. Previously, you were limited to domain names no longer than 23 characters. This does present some advantages under certain conditions, but, in most cases, it is best to try to keep your name as short as possible. Domain names are NOT case sensitive. So you can choose to capitalize them or not. Always try to use your Organizationname + .com if available. If your business name is two or more words, it’s more common to run them together than to use a dash. Instead of registering your business name you may want to register the name of your major product(s) or categories of your service. If your dream name is taken try combining it with an action verb... like go, shop, see or buy.