Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Register A Domain Name The Fastest Way

By Chris Norman

Registering a domain name is seen by many newcomers to the web as a very complicated, extremely technical task that the typical people cannot do.

Nothing could be extra from the truth.

You only need to bits of information on hand when you purchase your domain name:

- What you are going to call this domain

- and your web hosting DNS informations, these are given to you by your hosting company and look something like:
NS1.WEBSITEWELCOM.COM and
NS2.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM

They are almost each time provided to you in duo.

So foremost go to a well-known domain name registrar.
I recommend putting either www.Better-Domain-Names.com or www.Godaddy.com

These may not be the most inexpensive registrars currently on the web but their service, and reliability are excellent. I mostly work on the principle "You get what you pay for", and certainly not a right thing can be said about domain name registrars.

OK, lets walk through the process of purchasing a domain name:

Using your web browser, visit a domain registrar. Usually on the front page there is a search option to look if the domain name you want is getable.

Lets say for example, that you are trying to buy a domain name for your Dog Training website.

So you type in dogtraining.com push enter, and it comes back that that domain is already take.
Now, I would propose that you enter prefix and or suffix words to the domain name you are after.
So you may perhaps try:

betterdogtraining.com
bestdogtraining.com
dogtrainingnewsletter.com
dogtraininganswers.com

You possibly will also try placing dashes "-" in your domain names to separate words.
Admittedly, there are a group of search engine optimization persons who currently consider that the search engines are now beginning to penalize websites with 'dashes" in them.
Another factor, domains that do not have dashes and do not have any numbers in them, normally supposed to be sold for a higher fee.
So if you think you might sell your domain sometime in the upcoming, then it may be advisable to avoid putting both dashes and numbers.

Lets say, that you find dogtraininganswers.com is available.
So you move to the next page. Generally this asks you for the details of the person that is going to be the holder of this domain. Generally this will be your name, address, phone number etc.

Next the system will ask you for how long you want to purchase your domain for, the minimum period is 1 year and the most I have seen is 10 years. Most people go for the 1 year time period, only because it costs the least.
On the Better-Domain-names.com screen and the Godaddy.com page, you will see a link that says:
"If hosting your site elsewhere, please click here to set name servers"

Please set your name servers now (opting for the name server informations given to you by your hosting company), otherwise if you have to come back and change the default name servers at a posterior date. The trouble is that it usually takes a long time for the name servers to broadcast around the net and you may perhaps wait several days for this to happen. But if you set them now, they should propagate within a few minutes, possibly half an hour at the most.

Once you have put in *both* name servers values, you then move onto the payment screen where you key in your credit card details.

Here you may see an option entitled "Auto Renew". Check this box!
This permits you to recharge the domain automatically when its term expires. Any good domain name registrar should send you an multiple emails before the domain is set to terminate, and if you take no action on these emails, then the domain will get recurringly regenerated.
If you don't set this "Auto renew" option, then system will let the domain gap and it becomes getable for some else to register.

Once you press the "submit" button, it will take just a few instants for that new domain name to be yours.

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