Update : Link to the DN Registration Forms

Today’s post is a slight diversion from the usual website reviews, I thought maybe today I should be a bit more informative rather than critical. So having had to register a .co.bw domain name in the past, I thought it might be useful to some people who may want a .bw domain name.

.bw is the top level domain (TLD) for internet domain names in Botswana and the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation(BTC) are the authority over the .bw domain space. So this means that, if you want to register a domain name that ends with .bw you’ve got to get in touch with BTC, fill in some forms and wait for them to do their “magic”.

Unfortunately, you cannot check for the availability of your .bw domain name online, BTC does not have that facility just yet, so you have to do some paperwork to get your .bw registered.

The domain registration form provided by BTC is quite easy to fill in I must say, the good thing is that it has some pretty nicely written and straight forward instructions annexed to the form.

The following information is required to fill the form

1. The domain name you want to register [obvious, isn't it?], unfortunately, at the moment there’s no way of automatically checking whether the domain name is available for registration or not.
2. Domain Nameservers  and their IP addresses, you need at least the primary and the secondary nameservers which you can easily get from your prospective webhosting companies like Bluehost, Godaddy, Fastdomain, 1and1, Dotster, Fasthosts etc.
3. Money talks and it makes the world go round; the cost of a commercial or personal .bw domain name at the time of writing this article was BWP 500.00 for 2 years (roughly USD 35.00/year) which is rather expensive I have to say. Given that you can quite easily get a more popular .com domain name for as low as USD 8/year.
4. Apparently, the registration of a .org.bw domain name is free, I learnt this from one of my colleagues who was registering the domain name for the Botswana Scripture Union website- subotswana.org.bw (which “Dotex Web Hosting ” are developing kindly developing free as well ;-))

The domain registration forms are not available for download from the BTC website however,  but I do have a copy of the form, will just confirm with the guys at BTC whether I won’t be on the red if I redistribute it. I’ll put the link to the form here in due course if I get the all clear from BTC.

Other places where you can apparently register a .co.bw domain name

BNamed

Marcaria - for a whooping $280.00 (that’s way too expensive)