A domain name is the name of your website that you type in to your browser. It is the Address for finding a website. A little like a house number and post code will find your house, the domain name will find the computer where your website is hosted for viewing. For example, the domain name of this website is MyNewVenture.co.uk. You purchase a domain name for a period of time, usually one or two years. After that, if you still want the domain name, you must renew it for a fee. You can own a domain name, whether it points to a website or not. You can also have several domain names pointing to one website.

Many good names have already been snapped up. When you select your name, try to keep it as memorable as possible. Many people mistakenly think that the domain name should contain keywords for better search engine ranking. This is not true. Select your domain with human beings in mind. That means easy to remember, easy to type and not prone to spelling errors.

Think carefully when choosing your name and stick with it. You can lose all your search engine listings when you change domain names and it takes a long time to get listed again. Search engines 'like' to see age in a website. Generally, the longer you have been around with same type of content, the more credibility you gain.

When we purchase your domain for you, we register it in your name and at your address so that you are the owner of the domain. Many low-cost web development services register their client's domain in their own name which keeps you locked into their service. We never do this.

Domain names have what is called a suffix. This is the .com, .org, .co.uk, .eu and so on at the end of the name. The suffix often reflects the country the business is located in and, also, sometimes what type of business it is. For instance, .com tends to be American-based and of a commercial nature, while .org is meant for charities and non-profit organisations. .co.uk is commercial United Kingdom and .eu is European. There are many more suffixes.

Sometimes if someone cannot buy their preferred domain name with the preferred suffix (such as .com), they will opt for that name with a different suffix such as .net, .info and the new international .co suffix. I think it is best to find a name in the top level domain of your country (.com in the US; co.uk in the UK and .co internationally). Customers can forget if you are .info, .net, etc, and simply go for the .com or .co.uk address first. In this case, you are simply handing your customers over to your potential competitor.

There are only a limited number of Domain Names, especially the good names. Some people buy up domain names for many reasons other than for their website. Some speculate that good names will increase in value, some start a business and then lose interest and others simply bought names on a whim. It would be a shame if good names were not accessible to people who would genuinely use them. Therefore, people who hold on to domain names must pay a fee every year or two years. That way, if people don't really want them, they are released back into the pool for purchase. You have first chance at renewal of your existing domain name, so that you can protect your business name.

First of all, think of a billboard. A printer will create the paper posters. But, for people to see the poster, they have to be pasted onto billboards in public areas. The person doing the advertising has to pay to use the billboard 'space'.

Websites are similar. Instead of a paper poster, a website is a collection of programming code and pictures sitting on the computer of the person who developed it. Just like the poster needs to buy space on a public billboard to be seen, your website needs to buy 'space' on a special type of computer that displays websites on the internet. This is called a web hosting server. And, just like with the billboard, you need to pay recurring fees to the web host for publishing your website so it can be found and seen on the internet.

My New Venture offers competitively-priced web hosting services so you can be assured of a reliable presence on the web.

A browser is the software on your computer that helps you navigate to websites. It is a little like a frame that you type in the web address and then it goes and 'fetches' the web page content you are looking for and displays it within the frame of your browser. The most well-known browsers are Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer, but there are many others.

What many people do not realise is that websites can look very different on different browsers. So if you develop a website and do all your testing with Internet Explorer, you may be very disappointed at the end if you wait until then to check it in a different browser. Layout and spacing can be radically different and look amateurish and messy if you are not careful.

We always check our websites in the major browsers before releasing them.

Most people think that a website is simply the picture of a screen as you view it. That is not true. Your website is a collection of programming code, formatting instructions, colour references and pictures. When someone visits your website what happens is this. The visitor's browser makes a request to read the website code. That code is passed to the browser and the browser then assembles the layout, interprets the colours, adds the words and picture placement on your screen right before your eyes!

The words and pictures are stored on the web server in various 'bins'. In the form they are stored, they do not make an awful lot of sense:

When you 'visit' the website, your browser reads and interprets programming code to decide how to arrange to present the words and pictures to your screen. So the above jumbled fruit names and their pictures might appear on your screen in a more orderly way like this:

Have you ever seen a webpage load with a delay in some of the pictures? That is an example of the browser assembling the page in front of you. Usually the quick items to load, such as text, come up fairly quickly and the bigger items, like pictures, need more time to be filled in. Each browser does this slightly differently and interprets the instructions in their own way. This can be a little awkward for the web developer because an instruction in one browser can mean something different to another browser!

At My New Venture, we design primarily for recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, IE and Safari. Occasionally, there are compromises where one browser view will not be as perfect as the others.