Registration Terms Glossary

Confused by the registration lingo? Learn the definitions of commonly used domain registration terms and phrases.

.aero: The TLD designated for the air transport industry, available only to aviation community members.

.biz: The .biz TLD is a designated suffix for businesses. Domains using the .biz extension must be used for business or commercial use.

.com: Short for .commercial. Domain names with the .com extension are the most popular and can be purchased by any individual or business in any country.

.coop: This TLD is available to cooperatives, cooperative service organizations and wholly owned subsidiaries of cooperatives.

.info: .info domains are available to the general public.

.museum: This TLD is available only to museums, museum organizations and individual members of the museum profession.

.name: Available to the general public, .name email addresses are listed as firstname@lastname.name or lastname@firstname.name. Web sites are listed as www.firstname.lastname.name.

.net: Short for .network. This domain extension was originally designed to be used by technical web sites. However, this extension can be registered by anyone.

.org: Short for .organization. Originally for non-profit organizations that did not fit under the .com or .net extension. However any individual or business may now register a .org domain name.

.pro: The .pro suffix was created for certified professionals including lawyers, doctors and accountants.

Administrative Contact: When registering a domain name, the administrative contact must be provided to the registrar when completing the registration form. The administrative contact is the individual who is responsible for acting as the primary contact. The administrative contact does not necessarily need to be able to manage the technical aspects of the domain.

Appraising: The process of evaluating a domain name and determining its market value.

Bandwidth: The amount of data that can be transmitted at a given moment to a server. The higher your bandwidth the larger amount of traffic your site can handle at one time.

Billing Contact: When registering a domain name, the billing contact must be provided to the registrar when completing the registration form. The billing contact is responsible for receiving the bills and paying the registrar any fees.

CGI: Short for Common Gateway Interface, a small script that processes data taken from the user such as from a form application or guestbook entry.

Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD): Each country has a unique domain extension, usually a two letter abbreviation for the country. IANA is the organization responsible for overseeing the ccTLDs.

Cybersquatter: The illegal act of buying up domain names and