How to Check if a Domain Name is Still Available or Has Already Been Registered
A domain name is the name that someone types into the browser when they want to visit your website. A domain name is also known as the website address. For example, the domain name of our company’s website is www.ng44.com
The name of your website is its unique identifier. There are rules guiding the type of names that should be used for online business websites; these shall be discussed in more detail in later Lessons. If this is your first time of reading this Lesson and you do not already have a domain name before, you should register one now so that you will have something to practice with.
If you do not already have a name in mind, take a moment to think about what you want to name your first website. It could be your company name or your own name. Even if you do not have a company yet, you should know that you are in business now and very soon your online business will grow into a large thriving company so if you do not already have a company name in mind then you should start thinking of one right now.
Examples: Innovationtech, Markdigitalng, Ogbconsult, deltatrixltd, kerabytenigeria, kenalissa
Take your time and don’t rush yourself. The name must not be too long, should be easy to pronounce and easy to remember with as few syllables as possible. The website that you register in this Lesson will serve as a test bed for practicing the exercises and examples contained in this course. When you have finished practicing you can then convert the site back to your official corporate website just as we have done at www.ng44.com or to your personal blog.
Is the Name Still Available?
When you have decided on a name, the next thing is to check to see if it is still available or if it has already been registered by someone else before. Note that many of the common names that you can think of have already been registered by people so you should try and be innovative when picking a name.
If the original name that you wanted has been taken, you can try adding numbers or ng or ngr or ltd or using a “–“ to separate the words of the name and then search again or you can select a new name entirely.
Examples: digitalmarket, digitalmarketng, digitalmarketltd, digital-market, ngrdigitalmarket etc
To check if a name is available, go to www.m.ng44.com/namecheap
Enter the domain name that you want to check (without the .com), for example if you want to register www.kenalissa.com, enter just kenalissa without the www in front and without the .com at the end then click on “Search”.
Tip: The .com or .net or .anything part of a domain name is called the Top Level Domain or TLD. To search for multiple Top Level Domains for a single name at once, click inside the red box as indicated below to reveal more options for multiple selections.
Next, select the checkboxes beside all the TLDs that you want to simultaneously search for and click on Search.
If the name is still available then you are lucky.
You may now proceed to do the actual registration of the domain. If it is not available then you will have to repeat the search to find one which is available or pick from the alternative options that will also be displayed.
