A domain name is a website address such as www.mywebsite.com To become the owner of a domain name you need to register it on a yearly basis at a domain registrar. Most web hosts also offer domain registration when purchasing hosting. If a domain is not renewed it expires and becomes available to the public.
A domain name can be registered even if a website doesn’t exist, so there is no need to wait until your site is ready. In fact the longer you wait the harder it will be to get a website address that looks and sounds nice.
How To Choose A Domain Name
Don’t check the availability of a domain at the domain registrar or at a web host, because if you hesitate to register it immediately, the next time you come back it may already be taken and put up for sale at a much higher price than what registration costs.
Rather, see if a domain isn’t taken by typing the address into the browser address bar, if no site pops up (or no “for sale” sign), chances are it’s available. Make a list of domains that don’t seem to have a website attached to it and when you are ready to register, head on over to the registrar and lay claim to one from your list.
What Is Domain Privacy?
The folks who set the rules for domains require that registrars make public the domain owner’s contact info, such as name, address, and telephone number. Many people don’t like the idea of their personal information being out there for everyone to see, so for an additional fee registrars will hide the owner’s contact details and replace it with the registrar’s contact info instead.
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How To Set Up Domain With Website
If you buy web hosting and a domain together, the domain is already set up to work with your website, but if you register your domain separately you will need to point it to your web host so that it connects with your website.
There are two ways to point a domain to a website:
- Log into the domain registrar and enter the nameservers of the web host,
- Log into the domain registrar and enter the server IP for the A-Record
It’s sounds complicated but both ways are easy to do. The web host provides the nameservers (dns) as well as the server IP number, it’s simply a matter of copying it and pasting it into your domain registrar account. Whichever way you choose to point your domain to your website is up to you.
When pointing a domain with dns some options associated with the domain such as setting up email will be done from the web hosting account, whereas when pointing a domain with the server IP, all options associated with the domain will be done from the domain registrar account.