What ia allowed in the making up of a domain name

[chaky]

Hi
Which of the following symbols is allowed in making up a Domain name ?
Dashes -
Underscores _
Slashes /
Dots .
Also whch extensions are allowed in a Domain name ?
.com
.net
.ca etc.
Thanks:eek::cool:
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[Pegasus]

You can't use slashes or dots, as far as I know, in a domain name. As for what extensions are allowed, there should be a list of what your domain name registrar is willing to take on, on your registrar's site.

Peg

[Horus_Kol]

the extension, or top level domains, are identifiers on what type of site and where it is located.

for example, .com is a generic TLD - but .org is typically reserved for non-business/not-for-profit organisations, while .me would be a personal site.

.com.us or .co.uk indicates a site hosted in the US or in the UK, respectively - .org.au would be a non-business/not-for-profit organisation in Australia.

However, these are not hard rules - and it is easy to register a TLD for another location.

I think the only TLD that is not publically available on the recognised list is .gov - that is reserved for government organisations - and .edu, where credentials as an educational institution would be required...


As Peg said, .'s and /'s are not allowed - these have special meanings in URLs.

-'s are allowed, but there is an argument over whether it makes the URL look nice or not...

[fcolor]

Slaches are OK. Dots only as a part of the ranking system if there is a dot that you're going on level down.

[Horus_Kol]

how can slashes be okay in a domain name? it has a special meaning in a URL (folder)

[slinky]

Though slashes and dots are allowed, I don't think they are terribly user-friendly.

[Pegasus]

Not really user-friendly, no. You have to make sure you have the rest of the URL correct, too. Thing is, slashes and dots refer to parts of the original site, not the site itself. It's fine for internal links, but for the first page of your site? Not really.

[backbone]

Well,dashes are acceptable, .com .net .ca are acceptable.
But try to get single if not three words domain.
Use dot com (.com)

Good luck

[Horus_Kol]

why .com?

search engines are starting to score sites based on their "nearness" to you - so the exact same site registered with both a .com and .com.au will have the .com.au score higher if the search engine sees that you are in Australia, for example...

also - since TLDs have specific meanings (like .org and .tv), search engines are using that as part of the information they gather on a site... and, since .com is the generic original, this could hurt your search rank (although, possibly not to a great extent).

[Heyitzme]

Well there are soo many domain extensions out there for various purposes, Com, Net, Org are the usual, other than those there are , Country based extensions such as .co.uk, .US, IT, IN, Fr etc etc, and there are also .Biz, .Info, Gov, .Edu these extension are for relevant web sites. For mobiles based wbe sites you can use .mobi