The internet pervades nearly every aspect of our life these days yet a lot of people still don’t understand some of the basic ideas that go into making the web work. There are countless new websites created everyday, but many would-be webmasters shy away from the fray because they just don’t get it! Domain name registration is one piece of the website pie that can be painfully complex. What is a domain, what does it do? Are common questions I here from confused clients.

Following the Series
If you’ve been following my series on How to Create My Own Website, then hopefully at this point you’ve done your due diligence and found an available domain name for your site using the tools I suggested in my previous post– great! Before you go and throw down your hard earned money let’s go over exactly what a domain name is; you want to know what you’re buying right? You probably want to know how and where to buy it too. No worries!

Domain names demystified, the story of Machine Land

Replacing the machine-people with computers in this story paints a twisted picture of how domain names work. In over-simplified terms, every computer on a network (the internet is a network of computers) has a unique number called an IP address. As an alternative to using an IP address to visit a website hosted on a particular computer, we can use an alias to “call” it. An IP address basically indicates a computer’s location on a network, in much the same way a telephone number would indicate where you lived. You can access a networked computer by either method — but which one would you rather print on your business card?

So now that you understand exactly what a domain name is, how do you go about getting one?

Understanding The Domain Registration Process

1. Find an available domain name. Domain names are stored in a gimongous database controlled by an organization called ICANN. A company that has the right to edit, view and remove entries from this database is called an accredited Registrar. Accredited Registrar’s usually have services that allow you to search for domains that are available.
2. Decide which registrar you want to use. It’s surprisingly easy for a company to get ICANN accreditation so you have to be careful in choosing a registrar that isn’t going to stab you in the backside or try to take advantage of you when you need help. I’ve listed my preferred registrar’s below for your reference.
3. Visit a domain registrar and purchase a domain name contract from 1 to 10 years. After finding an available domain on a registrar’s search you can select it for purchase for a period of up to 10 years. Most people grab the 1-year deals, but in reality it’s usually better to get 2 or 3 years to avoid expiration complications. It’s only a contract so essentially you’re renting the right to use the domain — but whenever your domain expires you have first dibs on renewing it.
4. Fill in the information you want to display on the WHOIS contact for your domain.The contact information you provide to a registrar when registering your domain is made available to other domain services and can be found using a WHOIS service. You can essentially find the owner of any domain using a whois lookup. Some companies will allow you to hide your contact info for a small fee, replacing it with their own, other companies do it for free.



5. Update your Name Server information to point to the name server hosting your website’s info. When you get a webhost, you’ll need to have the DNS information updated so that anyone that visits your domain will access your files stored at the right IP Address. This is usually done by entering in the name server info for your domain at your registrar’s accounts page. Your webhost will provide you with the list of name servers to use for this. A name server tells other computers on the internet how to translate your domain name to it’s associated IP address. Until the DNS info is setup your domain won’t work.
6. Wait from about 2 to 48 hours for the information to load onto the internet. It can take up to a week in the worst case to have your DNS information circulating on the net so that people can visit your site. In most cases it will propagate in only a number of hours.
7. Voila! Working Website! After the DNS info is circulated, you have a working domain name! Now all you have to do is put something there!

Five (5) Tips for Finding a Good Domain Registrar

Not all registrar’s are created equally. As I mentioned before it’s very easy for bad companies to take advantage of customers and do evil things like taking your domain hostage for ransom. To avoid any of those type of problems use these 5 tips to help you find the good ones.

1. Only work with known businesses that have a good reputation.
2. Use registrars that allow you to change your websites DNS (website) and MX (email) information.
3. Professional registrar’s will give you adequate notice when your domain is about to expire, bad one’s will try to keep your domains hostage until you pay a nasty fee.
4. Find out the domain expiration and transfer policy before you buy!
5. Do not do business with companies that keep your domain hostage after they expire!

Millionster’s preferred Domain Registrar’s

For domain registration ONLY check out these guys. I’ve used them all before.

* Currently Millionster ONLY recommends Dreamhost as a Domain Registrar and strongly recommends AGAINST using GoDaddy because of their corrupt business practices.

or get a free domain with a web host plan from one of these guys

* DreamHost - Millionster is hosted on DH.
* Nexx
* Powweb
* BlueHost
* Host Monster

If you’re undecided about which host to choose, I’ll go over that in the next article!

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