Registrar Um Domínio Para Seu Site
Domain Name Registration

Registering your own domain is simple and worthwhile:
How to do it yourself and the advantages it brings.

- avoid being a hostage of your web hosting service provider

- prevent that others discover the domain name you wish to register

- how to register a domain at Brazil's official registrar, registro.br

How to avoid being a hostage of your web hosting service provider

To not run the risk of becoming a hostage of you web hosting service provider, do not let them register your domain name. Who registers the domain name has the information and the power to decide on key matters such as hosting, transfer (sale) and assigning administration rights. If this power and information is in the hands of your web hosting service provider, it can be difficult to change hosts when you wish or need to. Registering your domain name independent from your hosting service provider, preferably doing it yourself, makes changing hosts easy. You just contract a new hosting service provider and change the addresses (DNS ^[1]) at the registrar. Provided you have a copy of your site, you don't even need collaboration from your old web host.

Registering your domain yourself, you won't become a hostage of your web hosting service provider. It guarantees that you can change hosts whenever you wish.

How to prevent that others discover the domain name you wish to register

Don't do a domain name availability check. Simply try to register.

It is rather risky to check domain name availability before registering. There are suspicions that some registrars offer the service of domain name availability checking in order to register names that are being checked and try to sell them to who did the checking. Even entering the intended name in browsers or search engines is risky. There are companies that monitor the Internet 24h a day in order to discover domain name availability checks with this same goal, to register and try to sell discovered names.

Simply trying to register is the best and safest domain name availability check. If the name you chose is available, you will be able to register it, if it isn't, you don't loose anything. Trying to register at a reliable registry administrator such as Brazil's registro.br, you won't even lose the registration fee because it is normally charged only after acceptance of your domain name.

If the registration fee is not paid in due time, you lose the right over the domain name. That is why so many companies try to discover domain names that are being checked. It is very lucrative to start registration and try to sell them. For the domain names they cannot sell, they simply don't pay the registration fee. Like this they neither gain nor lose anything. Not paying the registration fee when due, the respective domains become available again.

If by any chance you checked availability of the domain name you wished, saw it was available but once trying to register found out it wasn't anymore, it is worthwhile trying to register again after a few weeks. There is a good chance your availability check was discovered and registration of the domain name started in the hope of selling it to you. If you nor anybody els shows interest, they probably will not pay the registration fee in due time and lose the domain. As a result the domain name will be available again and you can still register it.

How to register a domain at Brazil's official Registry Administrator

The process of domain name registration at Brazil's official Registry Administrator registro.br, in my experience is quite simple and well explained (in portuguese). Overcoming my fear that something might go wrong, was rather more dificult than registering itself.

Before starting the registration process at registro.br you should think of an alternative domain name. During registration an alternative name is requested in case the preferred name is not available.

After acceptance of your domain name you have two weeks to send in required documents like CNPJ or CPF (company's or person's fiscal number) and pay the annual fee (R$ 30,00 for 2008). This done, your registration is official.

Registering a domain name ending in .br (such as www.domainname.com.br or www.domainname.org.br) at registro.br has some advantages. One is that is not permitted for others to register variations of names in the sense of adding hyphens. Having registered the domain for this site, variations like www.ton-van-hattum.com.br or www.ton-vanhattum.com.br are blocked. In the case of domains ending in .com, registered at USA registrars, it is permitted for others to register suchlike variations.

^[1] DNS: domain name server or domain name system. ^return

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