Hi Guys (or should I say noobs), welcome here again. This is the third post in this series (series 3 named Domain Names and Web Hosting). As you can see from the table of contents above, the first post was basic things to know about domain names and the second post was spice your blog with a domain name.

If you are convinced enough that you need a domain name for your blog, then let’s proceed on where to get one. Remember, when you buy a domain name, you are not actually buying as the word may imply. You are just renting it and will have to pay your annual dues until you decide not to use it any more. However, this does not strike out the fact that the domain name is temporally owned by you and the domain information will be yours and fully available to the entire web through services like whois.net, unless you pay for (or obtain free) domain privacy service.

Ok, enough of all that stuff

Where Can I Register A Domain Name?

I prefer you use the name register as opposed to buy, and I guess you have understood the explanation I gave above. You can talk of buying when you want to take the domain name over from some other individual who had already registered it, and in such a case, we are not going to be mentioning some $10.00 but many tens, if not hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Before we talk about registering a domain name, let’s have a little talk about domain registrars.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

We can’t talk about domain name registrars without mentioning ICANN (www.icann.org).
For every system to be successful, it needs a governing body that ensures uniformity in all activities. This is true especially in technology. Just imagine the USB Flash disk forexample. If there wasn’t a means of setting standards, then each PC manufacturing company will manufacture computers of various flash port sizes and also, USB flash disk manufactures will make USB Devices of various sizes and at the end of the day, you won’t find any pair that can go along.

ICANN is responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses. Remember we said a domain name forwards to an IP Address, so mentioning both in a single sentence is justified. If not of ICANN, then www.lainyonline.com will not be unique. It could have been possible for many registrars to register the same domain name for different individuals across the globe. The www could have been a mess altogether.

What / Who is a Domain Name Registrar?

A domain name registrar is any company that has been given the right to register domain names. This authority can come from ICANN or from the national ccTLD authority of a particular country.

What Exactly Do Domain Name Registrars Do

As earlier mentioned, a domain name registrar forwards the human readable domain name to its corresponding IP Address (which of course is the actual address of a website). Websites can still be accessed via their IP addresses, but we discussed that domains come into play to make those difficult numbers easy to handle by replacing them with words.

As we shall see earlier, domain name registrars do more than just forward domain names to IP Addresses.

Some Domain Name Registrars Worth Checking Out

I haven’t really used many domain name registration services, so I can’t present a concrete review here. However, I am very interested in a number of registrars that I have found on many reviews. If I were you I will not really trust the reviews because I don’t know how honest they are. If you want to check out a service, I recommend you ask a friend how has used it before, or someone who is not affiliated or directly linked with the service.

1. Netfirms : $4.95/yr (.com .net .org)
2. Hostway : $6.95/yr (.com .net .org)
3. FrugalName : $7.95/yr (.com .net .org)
4. Namecheap : $8.88/yr (.com .net .org)
5. AIT Domains : $7.99/yr (.com .net .org)
6. Go Daddy Software, Inc. $8.95/yr : (.com .net .org)
7. RegisterFly $8.95/yr : (.com .net .org)
8. PlanetDomain $12.99/yr : (.com .net .org)
9. Dotster $14.95/yr : (.com .net .org)
10. DirectNIC : $15/yr (.com .net .org)

The list above was borrowed from a post on E Consultant. The prices mentioned above are only for .com, .net and .org. Other TDLs feature different prices.

On this list, I have tried NameCheap, Netfirms and GoDaddy. I can proudly say NameCheap, though not the cheapest, is my best. For those of you who will like to use NameCheap, I will post a detailed review on a later date. Remember, I am just a humble and honest client. That’s all!

When choosing a Domain Name Registrar, taking price as the only yardstick is not a really good idea. One should always check out how good the customer service is, and also check out the extra benefits attached to the domain name they will purchase. Business practices and ethics also count a lot. I don’t think you will like a registrar that will intentionally trick you to allow your domain name to expire so that they can sell it at a higher price to you or another client (I know stories of such cases).

Now that you have an idea of where to register a domain name, our next post will be on how to choose the right domain name for your blog.

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