Domain Name Information

What is a Domain Name?
A Domain Name is an easy to remember name which points to an internet web address. It is the internet equivalent of a telephone number - make your computer "browser" software dial the domain name and you get through to the owners website. Domains names are not case sensitive.

Registered domain names are unique - as long as you register the name and keep up the registration year on year, no-one else can use that domain name.
Domain names have, in the past been used mainly by companies who register a name relevant to their business, for example PC Format has a site called pcformat.co.uk.

Basically anybody can register a name and it can be anything, your name, the name of your business, the name of your club or favourite animal...as long as it doesn't break standard copyright or trade mark rules or is the name of somebody else's business/trading name.

What's the .co.uk, .com and .net mean?
Domain names ending in .co.uk are maintained by a registry organisation in the uk called Nominet whilst those ending in .com and .net are maintained by an organisation called CORE.
Countries have their own endings, for example, .ws is Western Somoa.

The Rules on names
Web names must be at least 3 characters long. .com and .net domain names can be up to 63 characters long whilst .co.uk domains can be much longer.

But remember, a long name isn't as easy for your friends, customers, etc to remember and they'll also have to type it in each time!

Valid characters are letters, number and hyphens "-". You cannot start or end a domain name with a hypen though.
The only other rules, as mentioned above, are that you should not register names that somebody else has ownership or copyright/trade mark rights on.

How are my personal details used?
Domain names are registered through two external organisations, Nominet for .co.uk's and CORE for .com's and .net's. These organisations are themselves governed by an international organisation called ICANN and locally in the UK by the Government's DTI.
As a result of this, we are required to pass on user details for domain owners to Nominet or CORE.
This information includes user name, business name, address, telephone and fax numbers and email address. These details may be displayed by Nominet and CORE publically on the Internet when anybody does a Who-is to check the current registered owner of a domain.
If you do not wish certain information to be seen on the internet then please consider entering, for example, a work address and telephone rather than a home address and telephone number.