Budget Website Hosting UK

General Domain Name Guidelines

The following Domain Name Registration Guidelines relate to ALL Extensions (ie: .com, co.uk, .org.uk, .org etc)

• Domains are registered on a first come first served basis
• Domains should not include Registered Trademarks
• Names should be short and easy to remember (no more than 10 characters is recommended).
• Names should comprise only the letters a-z, the digits 0-9 and the dash -.
• Names should not begin or end in a dash.
• Domains must be longer than 2 characters in length (not including the extension).
• Domains names are not case sensitive, so it doesn't matter whether you type in upper or lower case characters
• Domain names cannot contain dots or spaces and therefore should be replaced with hyphens ( - ) or underscores ( _ ).
• Names with hyphens (- ) or underscores ( - ) will be regarded as separate entities. (i.e. 1stchoicewebhost.co.uk and 1st-choice-webhost.co.uk will be two separate domains)
  

The next choice is the suffix. The majority of domains on the Internet end with either.co.uk (or the country specific equivalent such as .co.fr) or .com although other extensions such as .biz are becoming popular.

The main difference between .co.uk and .com is that .com domains are registered in America and seen as International domains and, co.uk domains are registered in Britain. The .co.uk suffix is becoming the norm for UK based individuals and companies, however, where possible we recommend that you get both .co.uk and .com.

UK Domain Name Guidelines

Web sites relating to the UK normally use domains that end in .uk, but are divided into 5 categories, known as Second Level Domains (SLDs).

• .co.uk is used by commercial sites and is often for personal sites.
• .me.uk is specifically for personal sites.
• .org.uk is for use by non-commercial organisations
• .plc.uk and .ltd.uk are both exclusively for registered companies only.
• .net.uk is for Internet Service Providers

As far as the actual domains that can be registered for each SLD are concerned, ,co.uk and .org.uk are pretty much unrestricted. The other SLDs do however have restrictions as to what can be registered and you should have read and understood the guidelines for each before making a purchase. Please contact us before buying if you have any questions about any of the .uk domains.

Guidelines for .co.uk Domain Registrations :
As mentioned above, there is basically no restriction as to what can be registered for a .co.uk domain, and it doesn't matter whether you are in the UK or outside the UK. Originally, this SLD was intended for UK companies.

Guidelines for .me.uk Domain Registrations :
As the market for personal namespace in the UK grew, there was a demand for an SLD appropriate for this type of site, hence the introduction of the .me.uk extension.

The guidelines say that those who register domains with this extension are expected to have an association with the UK, and the domain name is expected to be representative of that person’s legal name. In reality however, it is possible to register a domain with any group of words and the requirement to register a legal name is not actually compulsory.

If the .co.uk SLD for a name is not available, then the .me.uk is ideal.

Guidelines for .org.uk Domain Registrations :
This domain SLD was originally intended to be used by non-profit or public service enterprises who are associated with the UK. Examples include charities, trade unions, political parties, community groups, educational councils and professional institutions.

Guidelines for .plc.uk and ltd.uk Domain Registrations :
Registrants to these two newer SLDs are required to be public limited and private limited companies respectively, that are registered under the Companies Act 1985. It is a requirement that the domain be registered in exactly the same name as the company name, with a few exceptions.

Only the characters a to z inclusive, 0 to 9 inclusive and hyphen can be included in a domain name and certain words will be removed from the registered company name where they occur at the end of the name before the domain name is generated. These are "limited", "public limited company" and the Welsh Language versions ("cyfyngedig" and "cwmni cyfyngedig cyhoeddus") along with the abbreviations of these words, e.g. ltd, plc, cyf and ccc.

Any spaces between words should either be ignored or replaced by a hyphen (-). If you are in any doubt regarding the algorithm used to convert your company name to a domain name, then please contact us for advice.

The application for .ltd.uk and .plc.uk domains must state the full name of the company as registered, along with the company registration number when ordering.

Guidelines for .net.uk Domain Registrations:
This SLD is restricted to only the computers of network providers – that is network information centre (NIC) and network operation centre (NOC) computers, the administrative computers, and the network node computers.

The restrictions on the use of this SLD are tight so you need to contact us first if you wish us to process your domain name request.