DOMAIN names can help people find your website and memorable ones can be worth a fortune.

So last week's announcement that more domain names are to become available has sent ripples of excitement through the cyber world.

There had been fears from that the world wide web would run out of options, so the seven new suffixes should offer new opportunities for those quick off the mark.

The current 20 million domain names, or website addresses, have suffixes such as .com for commercial enterprises, .co.uk for British companies and .org for non-profit making organisations.

The new ones to be offered include .biz for businesses and .name for individuals - this one could prove interesting as thousands of people try to bag their own name and discover lots of other Jane Smiths had the same idea.

The other new names are; .museum for museums, .pro for professionals .aero for aviation, .coop for co-operatives and .info for general information.

As yet there is no date put on the release of the names but they are expected to be available by the end of next June which gives potential buyers plenty of time to look into the issues surrounding names.

A good place to start is The Domain Name Buyers Guide at www.domainnamebuyersguide.com. The site is run by a variety of people in Europe and America who have collaborated to provide a comprehensive service which aims to be unbiased. When you have decided you want to go ahead with a web venture, its time to decide where to buy your new name.

If you are going into business, then the company building your site may offer the name as part of the deal or you might want to check around in trade magazines for the best price. The official provider of domain registration, NIC, can be found at www.nic.net and provides a lot of useful information. NIC is also currently warning against companies offering a pre-purchase registration of the new domain names. Before you start trying to buy, check out your potential name with a search such as that at www.netnames.co.uk. or see what has been put up for sale at sites such as www.greatdomainnames.com. Current offerings range from £3,000 for earthsupermarket.com to the incredible £3,175,000 for diamondseternally.com.