Registering A Domain, Starting Your Own Website (part 1)

Well there is no need to go anywhere else but here because I am going to teach you the simplest way that I know how to get started other than just going to blogger.com and starting a blog. If you want a website for business purposes or whatever reason that you may want one you can follow these easy steps to get set up.

Your domain name is the web address that people will use to go to your site. For example yahoo's domain name is yahoo.com. Usually your domain name will have something to do with the products that you are selling or have something to do with the content of the website.

So where do you go to register a domain name? Well there are many places on the web but my favorites are GoDaddy.com
and Namecheap.com. You will simply go to one of these websites and pick your domain name. Now if you are trying to start a site showing different pizza recipes you might want the domain name pizzarecipes.com, but most likely this one is going to be taken. You're going to have to be creative with your domain name. If your name is Dave, maybe try davespizzarecipes.com or davespizza-recipes.net there are all sorts of options and both Godaddy and Namecheap will give you good ideas of what is available.

Now I personally like Namecheap.com the best because they give you Whoisguard free for one year just for registering your domain through them. Now why is this important? Well anyone can go into the Whois database and look up your website and see who owns it, your address, and your phone number. So if you like to make sure these things are kept private as I do Namecheap is definitely the way to go. Godaddy offers Whoisguard also but it isn't free. I'm not quite sure how much it is but I think I remember it being around $20 a year.

There will be many different options to choose from after you choose your domain name, but unless you are selling products directly from your website I don't think these are necessary.
So the bottom line is that you will probably be spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 to $20 dollars to register your domain name. That is the fee for one year but you can sign up for 2 years, 5 years, or whatever. I prefer to sign up for a year and just renew if I want to at the beginning of the year. You never know what might become obsolete and I don't want to pay for a domain name that I am not using.