So, you are ready to have your own website. Do you really need your own domain?

The explosion of the World Wide Web brought a lot of changes to people's lives. It suddenly introduced a new playing field which could provide a medium to reach a broader base. Websites and domains suddenly proliferated on the net, ranging from a little girl who posted her puppy's photo to big corporations who made it a point to make their homes on the net their company's storefront. Computer jargons, such as domain name, became a household word virtually overnight.

But what really is a domain name anyway? A domain name is basically a string of allowable characters, like letters, numbers, and some special characters, which would stand as an identification of a computer or group of computers on the Internet, and then converted into IP addresses as they traverse the information superhighway.

There are a lot of reasons why purchasing a domain name is beneficial, and in fact, would sometimes become necessary for your website. If your website is used just to post pictures of your baby's birthday and you just maintain that web presence for your family and friends to enjoy, then the need for your own domain name is not really that necessary since you can always opt for free web hosting sites make it their task to host your website.

However, if you intend to market your business on the net, it might be better to get your own domain name then have it hosted. There are a lot of hosting sites on the net that offers bundled packages of one year, or more, hosting service with a free domain name for a fee. This would include getting an email address that would appear as you(at)yourname.com. What is the advantage of all these since you can have your site hosted for free anyway? Well, the biggest advantage is that it lends a lot of credibility to your site. Having an Internet address like yourname.com is definitely a lot better and more believable than hosting.service.com/website/host/yourname, right?

Another one of its many advantages is that your site is now easier to remember since the keyword there would now be your company name, or your preferred name, and surfers would not be racking their brains anymore in trying to remember all the words in your address. Your company would now definitely be easier to look up on the web.

The necessity of a domain name depends a lot on the purpose of your website. There are some personal websites on the net today that have their own domain, and there are also businesses that do not have their own domain names and are content with free hosting services. Whether you would like to have your own domain name or not will largely depend on you.