Register a domain name, the first step to building your website.
By Kelly Land, © 2005-2010, All rights reserved.
Un-complicating the domain name registering process, so that you can move on to the more fun aspect of building your website and web design.
Your Step by Step HOW-TO Guide and Help
Domain Name Register Step 1: Have you finally decided to take the plunge and build yourself a website? Maybe it's a hobby site, or a family site? It might even be a website you intend to launch and build for a business.
That's great, websites have become the beginnings for fortunes, fame and plain ole fun.
s the first step. On a piece of paper, start jotting down domain names that you like. Try and keep it short. You want people to remember it easily. Once you're got a list of about 10-12 options, you can now go to a site like www.GoDaddy.com and see if it's available. If it isn't, do not fret. You will be given suggestions and alternatives. If none of them suit you, then go back to your piece of paper and start over. You'll eventually find the perfect domain name.
Domain Name Register Step 2: Of course, www.GoDaddy.com offers a nice domain name purchasing process. I find it easy to use, and I like their control panel. I own over 100 domain names, so I certainly need to be able to sift through these domain names easily, sell them, change my contact info or even transfer a domain name to someone else if I decide to sell it. You can even get domain name appraisals! If you already own a name or two, or have found yourself a domain name collector like me - you might see what they are worth. You could already be sitting on a small fortune by selling that domain name.
There are other domain name registrars as well. Just make sure they are members of ICANN. The biggest domain name registrars are GoDaddy, Network Solutions and Enom. I would steer clear of free domain register sites. Not sure if they are where you want to go. I've not had any personal experience, but stick with well known, reputable ICANN registrars.
My suggestion here, is that when you do go through the registration process on one of these sites, you register the name for 10 years. I'm not saying you have to do this with every domain name you purchase. But a domain name that is very important to you, make this as painless as possible - renew for 10 years.
If you don't want to do that, at least set your name to auto-renew within your control panel and make sure the payment information is current. And expired card could lead to losing a domain name!
Many of these companies offer web hosting as well. If you're not sure where you want to host your site, or not sure where to begin in that process, don't worry...I promise, it's not complicated either. You just want to make sure that if this is an important venture for you, whether personal or business - you want to find a credible web hosting service, that has an excellent reputation, offers daily back-ups of their servers and even a back -up to a remote server if possible. I'll tell you why...
I hosted all of my sites (8 of them) on one server. I was interviewed by a local newspaper about my sites and was very excited about the article coming out. It would me free publicity and more traffic. Wouldn't you know...
The morning the article came out, my server crashed and they had NO back-ups. NO server back ups!!! And being new and naive, I sure didn't have any back ups. At least not that were current. I was just not aware, or just more stupid to the fact that servers are JUST machines. They can be damaged like anything else by wear and tear, natural disasters and just plain ole glitches.
Now I have a server back up, remote server back up and a Maxtor back up right on my own computer. It pays for itself if anything should ever happen! This is not a huge amount of money, and SO worth it.
Domain Name Register Step 3: I have a tendency to do this when I register a domain name. It's not necessary by any means. But just a suggestion. I buy the .com, .net and .org. I don't just buy one of those. I buy them all. It's aggressive, and a bit more expensive, but do you really want to build a website and have someone else take the VERY same domain name and build a site on a similar or the same topic? It happens EVERY DAY. You would not believe how many people simply copy and paste images, content - entire websites! They just don't care.
You can protect yourself with companies like Copyscape.
Domain Name Register Step 4: You're done! You can move on to hosting your site and building it using a program like Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver. I use FrontPage myself.