Domain Name Registration

• Introduction
  
  
  • Domain Name Registration Overview
    
    
• Obtain Your Domain Name
  
  
  1. Choose an Effective Domain Name
  2. Has It Been Taken?
  3. Shop for the best domain name registration price OR let the host you choose in Step 4 do the registration for you
     
     
• Miscellaneous Links
  
  
  • Buying/Selling
  • Additional Reading

Domain Name Registration Overview

All web sites have an internet "address" in the form of either a DOMAIN NAME or SUBDOMAIN NAME. FREE web sites usually limit you to a subdomain name, however, some free web site providers allow you to obtain your own fully registered domain name. Fee hosted web sites generally require a fully registered domain name.

Fully registered domain names will generally run you $15 - $35 per year (with a similar one time setup fee) depending on market prices. An example of a fully registrered domain name would be

"www.yourname.com".

Subdomain names cost nothing; your host will tell you what it is. An example of a subdomain name would be

"www.geocities.com/yourname/".

Why should you pay for a fully registered domain name if subdomain names are provided for free by free host providers? The reason is that unless you are building a personal or hobbyist web site you'll want your own fully registered domain name because one or more of the following reasons may be true:

• you're required to go with a fee based host provider because the FREE host providers cannot meet your web site needs (see FREE Web Sites Overview) and fee based hosting services require fully registered domain names.
• you want people to be able to easily remember your internet address (www.freehost.com/yourname/ is harder to remember than www.yourname.com).
• search engine rankings are an important means of attracting traffic to your web site and search engines don't rank subdomain named web sites reliably.

Domain Name Selection Process

Has it already been taken?

Domain Name Registrar Price Shopping

Buying & Selling of Domain Names

Additional reading