Free WordPress in an Hour or Less: The Get It Done Guide to Installing and Using WordPress by Edward Jones Page B

website with a domain and a hosting account that you pay for, because once you acquire this, you are in control.  Your privately owned and hosted site doesn't have to look like a Facebook page, or like any other free provider's offerings.  You control not just the content, but the appearance as well.  You decide every detail of your site-- from the overall decision as to the type of site you want (blog, traditional business site, e-commerce, nonprofit organization) down to design details (where to place your logo, what colors are the menu options, and do they appear horizontally across the top of the page or vertically down the left side).  If you are in need of a web site to support a business, your website becomes on important part of your brand identity .  Your domain name can appear on your business cards, your letterhead, on promotional materials, on the exterior sign for your establishment, and even on the side of your pickup truck (if you happen to be in the type of business that uses a pickup truck).  All of these uses benefit from the major boost in credibility that comes with having your own domain name and website.  Potential customers take you far more seriously when you add a website address to the physical address and phone number that you display anywhere in your advertising.
    And for power, flexibility, and ease-of-use, you’ll find WordPress to be hard to beat. One out of four new websites that reach the web every day are powered by WordPress, and for good reason. Since it came into existence less than a decade ago, WordPress has become the number one content management system used for web publishing.  Available as a free download at www.wordpress.org , the program has been downloaded over 65 million times, and it has become so popular that major web hosting companies (like GoDaddy) provide automated tools for its fast installation. Whether your site needs to feature text, images, audio, or video, WordPress can handle it.  WordPress is used by countless individuals and small businesses and organizations, as well as by some very big names, including CNN, Yahoo, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Sony, and the New York Times, so you are in good company when you choose to go with WordPress.

What's in a name?  Choosing your domain name
    So, you're convinced you need your own privately hosted web site, and you've settled on WordPress as a way to create that site.  You'll also need to choose a domain name, and this may be one of the most difficult or possibly frustrating tasks of the entire project.  Because the Internet has been in existence for so long and web sites as someone's brand have become so prevalent, chances are you will discover that the name that you had in mind is already taken, and you will need to choose a variation of the name that you originally had in mind.
    First, you should understand something about the naming scheme used on the Internet, and how it relates to what are known as "top-level domains." In the United States, these are primarily domain names that end in .com, .net, .org, .edu, .biz, .info, .gov, and .us.  (There are others that are available, but these are the primary ones.) Other nations have country level domains available, such as .ca for Canada and .uk for United Kingdom.  Three of the top level domains, .edu, .org, and .gov are generally reserved for educational institutions, registered nonprofits, and Federal or state government.
    If name recognition or branding doesn’t concern you, any of the non-reserved types can be fair game especially since many web hosting companies charge less, at least for the first year, for the lesser-used variations, such as .info, .net, or .us.  But if branding or name recognition is important to you, you're absolutely going to need the popular .com designation.  Simple fact is, a large number of people that use the Internet still assume that every web site name ends in '.com,' and if you choose anything else, you risk missing out on all