Domain name

No one will be able to access your built website without a Domain. This is the address, if you like, of your website. The Domain comes after the www in your web address. In our example the Domain will be taylormadeclothing.co.uk so the web address will be www.taylormadeclothing.co.uk

To register a Domain you will need to choose a Domain registrar. The Domain registrar is a company that registers your Domain for you and they are all overseen by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). The largest Domain registrar is GoDaddy but we currently recommend using 123-reg for Domain registration purposes.

Creating your Domain registrar account

After selecting your Domain registrar, in our case 123-reg, it is time for you to create your free Domain registration account.

Using 123-reg, as an example, simply click on the person icon and select the ‘sign-up’ option.

Enter all of your details following the prompts. Once you have completed the registration of your free account you will be able to use it straight away.

Searching for your Domain

Without exception, all Domain registrars will have a ‘search for your Domain’ option. We have already registered taylormadeclothing.co.uk. For this example we will go ahead and enter a different Domain name ‘findmydomains.co.uk‘ in the ‘Find your perfect Domain’ box and click the green spyglass. The system will now search for your Domain and if it is available it will show you the price and allow you to add it to your basket.

If your Domain is not available then the registrar will present you with close matches. It is our strong recommendation to register .co.uk Domains if your business is in the UK. If the .co.uk is not available then select the .com if that is available. If your Domain is not available, try mixing up the words and or in worst case scenarios use a hyphen so for example taylor-madeclothing.co.uk if taylormadeclothing.co.uk was not available.

Purchase your Domain

In our case the findmydomains.co.uk was available so we added that to our basket. Once added to your basket click ‘continue to basket’ or click on the shopping trolley at the top right of your screen.

At the time of writing this article 123-reg automatically add a website builder to your order. Most Domain registrars will attempt to upsell you services such as this. In our case we will remove this option as we will be building our website in WordPress.

Click continue with purchase. 123-reg will always default to 2 years but you can go ahead and select the drop down and change to 1 year if you would prefer.

Your basket should show the total at the bottom and you can now go ahead and click on secure checkout to finalise the purchase of your Domain.

We will be coming back to your Domain once we are ready to set up the hosting which will be discussed in our insider knowledge – hosting article.

*At the time of creating this article 123-reg have a ‘First Year’ offer of 79p for .co.uk Domains.