How to Register Your Own Domain Name

If you have a web site, you should seriously consider registering your own domain name. A domain name is a name like "gastd.blogspot.com" or "thefreecountry.com", which you can use to refer to your website. Note that you do not have to be a company or organisation ("organization" in US English) to register a domain name. Any individual can do it too.

Importance of a Domain Name

There are a number of good reasons for having a domain name:

If you ever change your web host, your domain name goes with you. Your regular visitors or customers who knew your site name as www.thesitewizard.com (for example) would not have to be informed about a change of web address (also known as "URL"). They would simply type your domain name and they'd be brought to your new site.
If you are a business, a domain name gives you credibility. Few people will be willing to do business with a company that does not have its own domain name.
If you get a domain name that describes your company's business or name, people can remember the name easily and can return to your site without having to consult their documents. In fact, if you get a good name that describes your product or service, you might even get people who were trying their luck by typing "www.yourproductname.com" in their browser.
If you want good sponsors (advertisers) for your website, a domain name is usually helpful. It tends to give your website an aura of respectibility.

Registration Overview

Getting a domain name involves registering the name you want with an organisation called ICANN through a domain name registrar. For example, if you choose a name like "example.com", you will have to go to a registrar, pay a registration fee that costs around US$10 to US$40 for that name. That will give you the right to the name for a year, and you will have to renew it annually for (usually) the same amount per annum.
Some web hosts will register it and pay for the name for free (usually only the commercial web hosts), while others will do it for you but you'll have to foot the registrar fees.
My personal preference is to register the name directly with a domain name registrar rather than through my web host. I've heard stories, in the past, of less-than-reputable web hosts that registered the domain under their own name, making them the owner of the domain rather than you (although I don't know if such web hosts still exist today). Registering with a domain name registrar allows me to make sure that I am registered as the owner, the administrative and technical contacts. Being the owner is vital — if someone else places himself as the owner (such as your web host), he can always decide to charge you some exorbitant fee for the use of the name later, and there is little you can do. The various other contacts are less vital, but may still play important roles, depending on your registrar. For example, for some registrars, the administrative contact's approval is required before a domain name is transferred out of a web host (or at least, it used to be). If he/she cannot be contacted, the technical contact is used.
Domain names disappear extremely fast. Many people claim that all the good domain names are gone. I doubt that — but it is probably true that most good domain names that are descriptive of products and services have been taken. If you want a domain name for your site, I suggest you act now, or face the anguish of having lost that name later. After all, US$10 (more or less) for a year's ownership of the name is pretty cheap when you realise that you're cornering a good name for your website.

Step By Step Instructions

If you want to register a domain name, here's what you need to do. Please read it all before acting.

Think of a few good domain names that you'd like to use. It won't do to think of only one — it might already be taken (it probably is!). You can find some tips on choosing a good domain name from my article, Tips on Choosing a Domain Name, at Archive
There's more to it than meets the eye.
You will need either a credit card or a PayPal account to pay for the domain. This is a requirement of most if not all registrars. It will allow you to claim and get the domain name immediately on application. This is not an option (unfortunately).
If you already have a web host, obtain from them the names of their primary and secondary nameservers. Don't worry if you don't understand what these things mean. Just save the information somewhere. The information can usually be obtained from their FAQs or other documentation on their site, usually under a category like "domain name" or "DNS" or "domain name transfer" and the like. If you can't find it, email them. You'll need the information to point your domain name to your website after you buy your domain. Don't worry if you don't have a web host yet. Just read on.
If you do not have a web host, you can always allow the registrar to park your domain name at a temporary website specially set up for you. This way you can quickly secure your domain name before it's too late and still take your time to set up the other aspects of your site. As far as I can tell, most registrars (or probably all) automatically park your domain by default whether you ask them to or not, so if this is your situation, you probably don't have to do anything special to get it done. Some of those registrars also provide you with a free email address at your own domain name while it is parked at their site, like sales@example.com (where "example.com" is your domain).

List of Domain Name Registrars

There are numerous domain name registrars. Listed below are just a few, along with my comments, if I know anything about them. Note that the domain name industry is highly competitive, with prices wildly fluctuating throughout the year, every year, so it's impossible to really mention accurate prices below unless I spend all my time updating this page. Please check their sites for the latest rates. (Note: all prices are in US dollars.)

World's Largest Registrar - GoDaddy.com — This extremely popular registrar (possibly the biggest today) offers .com domain names for $9.99 (plus 20 cents) per year ($6.99 plus 20 cents if you transfer from another registrar). They have a web interface to manage your domains, free web redirection (where people who visit your domain will get transferred to another web address of your choice), free starter web page, free parked page or free "for sale" page, and an optional private domain registration where your domain is registered in the name of a proxy company. They offer .com, .us, .biz, .info, .net, .org, .ws, .name, .tv, .co.uk, .me.uk and .org.uk, etc. Note that (as with all registrars) the exact price varies depending on which domain you are registering (for example some domain suffixes are more expensive than others). Both credit card and PayPal payments are accepted.
Register.com — This domain name registrar has been in business for a very long time: they were one of the biggest around when I started buying my first domains. They are currently running an offer where they charge $9.99 for the first year ($37 per year for subsequent years) for a domain name with a free business email account. Domains qualifying for this offer include .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us and .info. Country-specific domains have different prices.
Namecheap — This company provides .com domains for $10.69 (plus 18 cents) per year ($9.69 if you transfer from other registrars). Along with your domain, you get free email forwarding, free web redirection (where anyone going to your domain is automatically directed to another address of your choice), free domain name parking, etc. For the first year (or at least, at the time I checked their prices), you can also have their WhoisGuard (where your particulars are masked from public view) for free. They have a wide variety of domain name extensions available, including .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us, .co.uk, .co, .de, etc. You can use either a credit card or PayPal for your purchases.
1&1 Internet — This is primarily a large web host that is also a domain name registrar. You are charged $6.99 for .com, .org, .net, .us domains. They also offer .info domains for $0.99 (first year only) and .biz at $8.99. The fee includes private domain registration, which means that your particulars are hidden from public view (done by registering the domain in the name of a proxy company). You also get a free email account, DNS management, domain forwarding and masking, and a starter website with each domain. Both credit card and PayPal payments are accepted by this registrar.
Dotster.com — This fairly popular registrar provides fairly cheap domain prices ($15.75 plus 20 cents per domain), a convenient web interface to manage your domains, an optional privacy facility where your domain name is registered in the name of a proxy company, etc. They offer .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us, .ca, .tv, .name, .cc, .de, .sr, .md, .co.uk, .us.com domains, etc. If you're transferring a domain here from other registrars, the price is even cheaper ($6.99 plus 20 cents). Both credit card and PayPal payments are accepted here.

In addition, as mentioned earlier, a number of commercial web hosts will give you a free domain name if you are hosting with them, as will many (if not all) of the registrars above.

After You Register Your Domain Name

If you're not sure what to do after you register your domain name, please read the Tutorials on how to create website

Conclusion

Once you've decided, you should not procrastinate. I've lost more than one domain name by procrastinating (I lost the latest one by only one day). After all, at the price you're paying, it works out to be less than $1 a month for the majority of the registrars.

Choose a Web Host and Sign Up for an Account

A web host is basically a company that has many computers connected to the Internet. When you place your web pages on their computers, everyone in the world will be able to connect to it and view them. You will need to sign up for an account with a web host so that your website has a home. If getting a domain name is analogous to getting a business name in the brick-and-mortar world, getting a web hosting account is comparable to renting office or shop premises for your business.
There are many issues involved in finding a good web host. Read up on the various things you need to look for in the article

Choose a Web Host and Sign Up for an Account

After you sign up for a web hosting account, you will need to point your domain to that account on your web host. Information on how to do this can be found in the guide How to Point a Domain Name to Your Website (Or What to Do After Buying Your Domain Name).
Designing your Web Pages
Once you have settled your domain name and web host, the next step is to design the web site itself. In this article, I will assume that you will be doing this yourself. If you are hiring a web designer to do it for you, you can probably skip this step, since that person will handle it on your behalf.
- Although there are many considerations in web design, as a beginner, your first step is to actually get something out onto the web. The fine-tuning can come after you've figured out how to publish a basic web page. One way is to use a WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") web editor to do it. Such editors allow you to design your site visually, without having to muck around with the technical details. They work just like a normal wordprocessor.
  There are many commercial and free web editors around. For those who don't mind spending money on a commercial program, Dreamweaver comes highly recommended by many webmasters. If you are planning to use this editor, thesitewizard.com has an online tutorial called Dreamweaver CS5.5 Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Dreamweaver CS5.5. The tutorial takes you through all the steps of creating a fully-functional website with multiple pages and a feedback form, and provides you with the theoretical and practical foundation that will help you create and maintain your site.
  If you prefer to use free software, you can find a complete tutorial on using KompoZer, a free WYSIWYG web editor, in the article How to Design and Publish Your Website with KompoZer. Like my Dreamweaver tutorial, this one also guides you through the process of creating a website from scratch. In addition, it shows you some of the main features of the KompoZer software so that you can go on improving and updating your site on your own.
  There are many other web design software around. If you prefer not to use either of the above, you can find some others listed on thefreecountry.com's Free HTML Editors and WYSIWYG Web Editors page. I also have tutorials for a few other WYSIWYG web editors here.
- After you have followed my tutorial, and are on the way to designing your website, you might want to read the article Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design as well. It takes a brief look at some of the real world issues that every web designer must deal with.
- An integral part of web design is search engine readiness. Search engine promotion does not start after the web site is made. It starts at the web design stage. The article 6 Tips on How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website is a must-read. Moreover, How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google is also important for the simple reason that Google is the most popular search engine around, at least at the time this page was written.
- There are many other issues regarding the design of web pages. The above will get you started. However, if you have the time after you get something out onto the web, you may want to read my other articles on Web Design and Website Promotion and Search Engine Ranking.
Testing Your Website
Although I list this step separately, this should be done throughout your web design cycle. I list it separately to give it a little more prominence, since too few new webmasters actually perform this step adequately.
You will need to test your web pages as you design them in the major browsers: the latest versions of Internet Explorer (version 11 at the time of this writing), Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome. All these browsers can be obtained free of charge, so it should be no hardship to get them. Unfortunately, directly testing your site in all these browsers is the only way you can really be sure that it works the way you want it to on your visitors' machines.

Optional: If you have the time, you may want to read my article on how to test your website in multiple versions of Internet Explorer and check your site under earlier versions of Internet Explorer ("IE"). This is not strictly necessary nowadays, since the main culprit causing website problems, IE 6, is disappearing from the Internet, with IE 7 following in its heels. In fact, chances are that the number of people using IE 6 will be too insignificant to bother with come 8 April 2014, the date that Microsoft stops supporting Windows XP (the system that includes IE 6). IE 8 and later are generally considered to be standards-compliant, although, like all browsers, earlier versions don't support the latest versions of the web standards.
If you want to improve the chances that your website will work in future versions of all web browsers, consider validating the code for your web pages. In layman's language, this means that you should check that the underlying code of your web page, called "HTML" and "CSS", has no syntax errors. You don't actually need technical knowledge of HTML and CSS to validate the page, since you can use one of the numerous free web page validators around to do the hard work. On the other hand, if the validator tells you that your page has errors, it may sometimes be hard to figure out what's wrong (and whether the error is actually a serious one) if you don't have the requisite knowledge. Having said that, some validators actually give concrete suggestions on how to fix your code, and one of them, called "HTML Tidy", is even supposed to be able to fix errors for you.
Collecting Credit Card Information, Making Money
If you are selling products or services, you will need some way to collect credit card information. If so, take a look at How to Accept Credit Cards on Your Website. I also have a step by step guide on How to Add an Order Form or a "Buy Now" button using PayPal to a Website for those using PayPal.
If you need advertisers for your website, you might want to read How to Make Money From Your Website and the follow-up article How to Increase Your Website Revenue from Affiliate Programs. A list of advertisers and affiliate programs can be found on Affiliate Programs: Free Sponsors and Advertisers. Those companies are on the constant lookout for new web publishers to display their advertisements.
Getting Your Site Noticed
When your site is ready, you will need to submit it to search engines like Google and Bing. You can use the links below to do this.
- Google's Link Submission Page
- Bing's Site Submission Page
In general, if your site is already linked to by other websites, you may not even need to submit it to these search engines. They will probably find it themselves by following the links on those websites.
Apart from submitting your site to the search engine, you may also want to consider promoting it in other ways, such as the usual way people did things before the creation of the Internet: advertisements in the newspapers, word-of-mouth, etc. There are even companies on the Internet, like PRWeb, that can help you create press releases, which may get your site noticed by news sites and blogs. As mentioned in my article on More Tips on Google Search Engine Results Placement, you can also advertise in the various search engines. Although I only mentioned Google in that article, since that was the topic of that discussion, you can also advertise in other search engines like Bing and Yahoo!. This has the potential of putting your advertisement near the top of the search engine results page, and possibly even on other websites.
There are also less obvious ways of promoting your website, which you might want to look into.

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Monday, January 20