Choosing a domain name

Domain names are like apartments: Rented, not owned

First note that domain names are rented, you do not permanently own them without continual (normally annual) payments. Most registrars will allow you to "register" a domain name for a period of up to 10 years (there's one registrar that offers a 100 year registration, but that's not worth it, as there is no guarantee that this company will be in business that long, or that domain names will work the same way that far into the future). I would recommend a maximum period of no more than 5 years. If you have someone who will be around and can remember, doing a year-by-year renewal process also works. Note that by registering for a larger group of years, some Domain Name Registrars give discounts - so if price is a consideration, this may also be helpful.

Domain Registrar Terms of Service [TOS]: Be very careful!

A "Domain Name Registrar" [registrars] is the company that you pay to reserve your domain name for your specific use (which means that someone else cannot use it), and you will pay them the equivalent of an annual fee for this. Note that the TOS (Terms of Service) for registrars differ widely. Some registrars offer very cheap pricing per domain name, but THEY end up owning the domain name. Others seem to offer some type of special extra service (such as some kind of spam filtering), but require you to agree to a length of service or some other limiting factors (such as an inability to transfer to another registrar whenever you need or want to).

Be sure to pick a registrar that grants complete ownership and control of the domain to you, so long as you continue to pay the appropriate fees. Also, you will want to check and see how long the registrar in question has been around. Many people have purchased a domain name through a company, only to have that company go out of business, leaving the people with nothing.

Deciding on a meaningful domain name

Successful domain names are short and memorable. Get this right and you won't go far wrong. However, don't choose a name that's so short that it makes no sense.

• Short: Your domain name will end up featuring on all your church publicity, so you won't want it to take up lots of space. Also, you don't want to put off people from typing it into their web-browser.
• Memorable: Having seen your website address on a church noticeboard (or wherever) you want to help people remember it so they can visit the website later.

Let's take a specific example. Say there is a church named Calvary Church of Muskegon, Michigan. Since the name "Calvary Church" is an often used name for churches, and the various "basic" domain names are already taken (eg cavarychurch.com, calvarychurch.org, etc) we need to find a domain name that is clear and understandable, easy to communicate, and something that people can remember. Here are a few examples of names that I would suggest:

• calvarymuskegon.com
• ccmkg.com
• calvarychurchmkg.com

Incidentally, note a few other random things about domain names:

• You cannot have spaces in domain names - this just plain does not work.
• It is best not to use hyphens in a domain name if you can help it. They make it harder for people to type the address, so shorten our-church-domain.org to ourchurchdomain.org where possible. This can make the domain name harder to read, but this is not usually a problem if you follow the next point:
• Try to restrict the domain name to contain only two words (or three at most).

Local community domains

If your church is trying to to reach a particular local community or town (and presumably it is) then one further option is to choose a domain name related to your community. This is a really good idea.

For example, St Daniel's Church, Littletown would do well to get a domain such as

• littletown.com,
• littletownlife.com,
• littletownonline.org, or
• littletownchurch.org,

Not only does this provide a domain name which is short and memorable, it gives you a website address which is immediately attractive and interesting to the very people you are trying to reach.

Creating a community website would take more work, but is also a potentially good idea. We suggest you read the Web Evangelism Guide's section on Community Portal Pages for some indication of what might be possible.

Keep your domain names forever

As a general recommendation, whatever domain name(s) you decide upon, I would highly recommend purchasing (if possible) at least the three primary name extensions, which are called "Top Level Domains" or TLD's (.com, .org, .net). This is to protect your site from being confused with another if someone should choose to buy up a domain name that you do not (for instance, "calvarychurch.net", "calvarychurch.org", and "calvarychurch.com" are all different websites, by different churches).

It is also highly recommended that you plan on keeping any primary, non-dated domain name for as long as possible. There is a known movement among certain groups (such as some smaller search engines, as well as pornography websites) to go around and buy up any expired domain name that has any traffic associated with it. This is to drive as much possible traffic to their websites as they can get. This can also have the negative affect of scaring someone away who was looking for content of....a different nature. So - be sure to have someone in charge of the domain names for your church, and to make sure that they are paid up (renewed) when necessary.