Other than coming up with a clever name for your web site, domain registration requires you to select an ÒextensionÓ, which is the suffix at the end of the domain name. .com happens to be the most common of them all. Different suffixes can tell you what kind of web site you are in. Commercial web sites use .biz, non-commercial organizations use .org, .net is for organizations involved in Internet infrastructure, while .name is used for personal names. There are also some extensions that have a more specialized use to them and are used exclusively by members of certain organizations. Those extensions are: .museum, .aero, and .coop.
There are also country code extensions. For instance, United States uses .us and Germany uses .de. There are different rules for using country extensions so permission may be required by your domain registrar on whether or not you may be able to use them.
Only registrars that have been certified by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) are authorized to perform domain registration.
Sometimes, domain registrars may not certified but may offer web hosting services through third parties.
The minimum period for which a domain name may be registered is one year. You may register your name for up to ten years. Prices are usually slightly lower if you register for a long period of time.