Keep Your Domain Safely In Site

With almost every kind of company requiring a web site these days, it's easy to see why names are important. Domain name registration is vital for protecting a company from losing its rights to a site name and also for helping a company protect its trademarked names.

Unfortunately, for those not savvy with the Internet, the notion of getting started can be daunting. Figuring out how to register a domain name correctly can be a tricky undertaking. The Internet and its domain names are governed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN for short. This is an internationally recognized, nonprofit company that is responsible for Internet Protocol addresses, codes and more. It is with this agency Internet domain names and IP addresses must be registered to be valid.

Although ICANN oversees names and registration, it is not solely responsible for it. Instead, it uses a network of registration companies to perform these services for it. These companies range in what they offer and how they handle registration, but in general it's a good idea to have your domain name purchased through one of these companies that will in turn register the name to ensure someone else can't buy and use it.

Typically these companies offer not only registration services, but can also offer web site building, domain hosting and more. These one-stop shops are very popular among site owners and they tend to take the guesswork out of the process.

In general, once a domain name has been registered to a person or company, it is the property of that person or company. Some trademark issues may supercede this in some regions, but it's a good idea for a business to buy up all its possible names and re-register them as necessary to prevent theft.

The reason behind the creation of ICANN is pretty easy to understand. With so many businesses, organizations, agencies and so on across the world using web sites to promote their products, services and missions, the naming conventions could be out of control if there wasn't a central clearing house for this information. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, for example, wouldn't want its site name sold to a marble-collecting club. And the Coca-Cola Company likely wouldn't want Bob's Cola owning its site name.

ICANN offers a number of different extensions to help ensure everyone who wants a domain name or several can protect their interests. Government agencies, for example, have rights to extensions that end in .gov and nonprofits tend to use the .org extension. The famous .coms belong to the realm of corporations and individuals. There are many more extensions as well, each with its own set of proper uses.

If you'd like to set up a web site and get a domain name registered, there are literally hundreds of different companies available to make this a reality. Just make certain you keep up with registration or the name you build your business on could be sold to another at a later date. Good companies will let you know when registration is coming up and the prices generally are more than reasonable.
by:benjamin

How To Make A Podcast

A podcast is an easy way of distributing media files over the internet, and this article will tell how to make a podcast. The first thing necessary is a domain, and a host on which to store the media files for the podcast.

Getting a domain is simple and easy, there are many domain registrars that can register a domain for someone for a small fee. Some of these domain registrars are GoDaddy.com, Dotster, or Network Solutions are some that provide domains. The domain registrar will, for a small fee, enter the chosen domain, provided it is not being used, into the computers that form the backbone of the internet.

These computers will be told where the domain is located on the internet; what host it is that holds the domain's information. In order to give them that information, the name servers that are held by the host need to be associated with the domain. Once the domain is in place, a good host should be found. The host that is chosen should offer a large amount of both disk space and a much larger amount bandwidth. Disk space is neccessary because the site which holds the podcast will be storing large media files; audio or video files that take up a lot of space and are difficult to compress.

The large bandwidth is necessary because transferring these large files many times to many different people will use up the quota quickly. A good amount of diskspace would be several GigaBytes, bandwidth should be in the tens or hundreds of Gigabytes. Once the host is set up, it should offer you a couple of addresses called nameservers. Inputting these server addresses into the site where the domain was registered will complete the domain setup and allow the site to be found on the internet.

The next step for people who want to know how to make a podcast is installing the software necessary to maintain the podcast. A small piece of coding called dircaster.php can be used to set up a basic level of podcast. Dircaster.php can be found easily by searching for it in any search engine. Once it is located, it should be edited to reflect the particulars of the domain and uploaded to the site. Dircaster.php will generate an RSS file, or feed, that tells the subscriber about the new files available for downloading.

To begin podcasting, create the audio files that should be podcast, fill in the information about the file such as date, author, etc, and upload them to the same directory that contains dircaster.php. You now have a podcast, and all that is needed is to publicise the address of the file dircaster.php. To update the podcast with new information, just upload the new files. Other things to make the podcast better might be a site that contains information about the podcast, but it isn't necessary.

by:25072911