What is a Domain Name?

• A Domain Name personalises your website address from a set of numbers, or your service provider’s address with your name attached to a unique name licensed to you. eg: www.bigpond.com/yourname becomes www.yourname.com.au. It also personalises your email address.
• The home page address for Platypus Websites is www.platywebs.com.au. Our email address is platywebs.com.a – but [email protected] or [email protected] will also reach us. “www.platywebs.com.au” is our Domain Name. “.com.au” identifies us with the Australian commercial domain.

Australian Domains: com.au – (Commercial) net.au – (ISPs, miscellaneous) gov.au – (Government) edu.au – (Educational) asn.au – (Associations) id.au – (Personal) org.au – (Other organisations) Global Domains: com, net, org, info, biz, id, etc.

Who is entitled to a .com.au domain name?

• Multiple Domain Names can now be registered. The restriction of one .com.au per entity will no longer apply. Multiple names will now be able to be registered under a single entity.
• Abbreviation Rule and the Close and Substantial Rule. These can include:
  • The name of a product or service that the registrant manufactures or sells
  • The name of a service that the registrant provides
  • The name of an event that the registrant organizes or sponsors
  • The name of an activity for which the registrant provides teaching or training services
  • The name of a venue that is operated by the registrant
  • The name of a profession that is practiced by the registrant
  • Generic Words Are Now PermittedGeneric words will be allowed. It should be noted however, that some have been already been allocated via the auDA Auction process.
• The Introduction of Australian Trademarks as a basis for registering a com.au – If you have an Australian Trademark, or a pending Australian Trademark application, you can now register a .com.au based on that Trademark. For information on trademarks see Australian Trademarks
• The other substantiation proving your entitlement to a .com.au is a registered business name or company name. ABN or ACN is required.
• Be aware that a registered Trademark can give more entitlement to a domain name than a business name.

For more details see an extract from the audDA.com.au Policy

Licensing a Domain Name allows you to:

• Have different email addresses within your domain knowing that these won’t conflict with anyone else’s addresses,
  eg [email protected] , [email protected].
• Move to any Internet Service Provider through a process called “re-delegation”. This allows you to change ISPs without re-printing stationery or notifying customers of a change of email address.
• Helps your customers to easily remember your web addresses.
• Shows that you are serious about your business and gives you credibility among internet users

Cost?

• Registration: yourname.com.au is now $34.00 per 2 years incl. GST. through us (.com is $17/year).
  See list of registrars at www.auda.org.au/registrars/ and research carefully what is covered in their prices. We found at least one whose price did not include delegation of the name to another server or URL redirection. Let us register on your behalf.
• Hosting: $99.00 incl GST for most websites. ($52.00 for basic plan).

How long does it take to register a domain name?

• Registration and hosting – usually immediate, or overnight.
• As resellers we can do it all for you discounted, or
• You can do it all direct: —

How long before a new website becomes visible?

• First, at your registry, change the name servers to those of the host holdng your website files. (We can do this for you).
• Then wait for a period of from 2 hours to 3 days. This allows time for propagation. This is when notice of this new name is sent to WHOIS databases worldwide. Most Australian registrars get the updates to the WHOIS databases quickly and the larger ISPs update from there very quickly. However we know of one large ISP who takes 24 hours to update. That means that your neighbours on another ISP may see your domain name while you don’t see it.