Limitations of domain names

When buying a domain everyone wants the name to be unique and memorable. The domain name system, however, has certain limitations, and they are not to be forgotten. 

Just as it is impossible to register the domain a.com, for instance, so you will not manage to take the name the-very-best-website-ever-made-on-the-world-as-the-illustration-of-someones-website-creation-skills.com. But let us tell you about it in more detail.

Domain names consist of several parts, or levels, separated by dots:

1. a first-level domain (the rightmost part of the domain name, also called the domain zone) consists of one part — com, biz, org and so on — such a domain cannot be registered, you can only register a second-level subdomain of it for yourself.
2. a second-level domain consists of two parts — company.com, for instance. In a third-level domain a third part appears — for example the subdomains mail.company.com, www.company.com and so on.

The total length of a domain name (together with the subdomains, the dots and the first-level domain) cannot exceed 255 characters. 

The maximum length of the name of each level (between the dots) cannot be more than 63 characters. 

The minimum length of a name is 3 characters (in some zones 2 are allowed, but in practice every two-character combination is already taken). 

In a domain name you can use these characters:

• Latin letters, digits and the "-" sign (minus, hyphen). The case of the characters (upper, lower) plays no role;
• the name cannot contain two hyphens in a row or begin with such a character
• some domain zones support national alphabets (letters with diacritics, for instance). For such domains, however, there are other limitations (for example, you can register a domain of the form mueller.de written as müller.de, but you cannot create the mailbox müller@müller.de — only mueller@müller.de). 

So in the general case it is worth trying to pick a name for the future project that will be written in traditional Latin letters. In everything else the registration of domain names is limited only by the user's imagination. And given the low prices for domains, nothing stops you from registering several names for your project at once and then choosing the main one that suits it most precisely.