You will find lots of advice telling you to buy a domain name, but where and how to do that?
Picking Your Name Is Easy
- Generally, shorter is better -without hyphens-
- Remember to make it easy to remember, no matter what the length. Numbers aren’t a good idea.
- Be careful of copyright and don’t borrow someone else’s name for your site.
- There are many TLDs (top level domain extensions). It is still best to get a (dot)com ending since it is easy to remember.
Buy From Registrars
Going to a domain name registrar or buying through your webhosting company (many hosting companies sell domain names) are two ways to get a domain name.
My daughter bought hers from “Namecheap.com”, and then purchased her hosting with another company. When I started out at Netfirms, I bought my domain name through them.
Wherever you register your domain name, there is one thing you might keep in mind: privacy. If you would like to keep your personal information private, some do provide that service with the purchase, but more likely it is an add-on service. Check.
You are also likely to see offers that are deeply discounted, even free. If you look at the fine print, it is usually only for the first year; renewing the domain is at the usual going price.
Time periods of one year, two, three, etc are available. If you know this is a business or blog you want for a long period of time, it would be economical and less troublesome to sign up for a longer amount of time. It is normally less expensive.
I have renewed my most important domains for ten years. Those I wasn’t sure I would develop into a site or business were for one to two years at a time.
There will be some variation for fees depending on the company you go with- investigate.
Is the dashboard user friendly and the company reputable for support, etc? You will likely have to do a few things to point your domain to your web hosting.
After my initial purchases at Netfirms (which later put all their domain name business in Tucows hands), I had purchased a couple names from GoDaddy.
GoDaddy is one of the most popular, but I found it confusing to manage. It is somewhat better today, but I still like Netfirms/Tucows better, and privacy features were included in the cost.
It has been recommended to buy and manage the domain name separately from your hosting. I have never had problems, but I do follow that advice.
