Personal Doman Name Questions

[dsze]

I've been using the included webspace with my Comcast subscription and/or the free 500MB that I get from Purdue, BUT ....I want my own domain name that I can more efficiently run a photography business from. As it is, folks have to type in all kinds of garbage with a little ~tilda~ to get to my site and every other person I give a business card to, emails me saying they can't get the site to open up. So, I'd like a more user-friendly url. Any suggestions or advice appreciated on how I should go about doing this.

thanks,
daniel

[tommykjensen]

First You should figure out what domain name You want and check if it is taken already.

Then You should find a suitable host for the website.

If You want to run Your own server You should find a registrar where You can register the domain name and point to Your own server.

I think there is a thread in exhibition engine forum with lots of different hosts You can choose from. Some are free*, some are cheap and some are a little more expensive. My advice is to avoid the free and very cheap. In my opinion with regards to web hosting You almost always get what You pay for, in other words if the hosting is free there usually is no support or extremely slow support, no guarantee for uptime, no backup etc.

I have a danish host and I pay about $16 a month.

btw if You have a very original name that is not taken then do not post the name here before You actually have registered it to Yourself ;)

[dsze]

Thanks Tommy,

I just got a response from Comcast and they say that once I have a domain name registered with another company, I can configure it to redirect to my comcast website. This would be easier in that I wouldn't have to transfer all the files to a new host, and possibly cheaper in that I wouldn't need to purchase more web space; I'd just need to purchase the domain name. Any thoughts on doing this?

thanks,
daniel

[etaf]

you can use a company something like - dont know the equiv in USA
http://www.freeparking.co.uk/
for redirecting direct to your website - i have done this for a few people in UK that have free webspace with there ISP.
However, I'm not sure how search engines work with this - i dont think it works so well, with spiders etc

to check if your domain name is free
http://www.domainnames.co.uk/
Domain Name Search
Type in the domain name you require and select GO! We will check availability of the following suffixes: .com .net .org .info .biz .co.uk .org.uk .name

[Jill44]

I use Yahoo's Starter Package for $11.95 and I have a ton of space. I have been very happy with them and they have a good help desk. I use Frontpage 2003. You get what you pay for.


Hope this helps.

[blinking8s]

http://www.eleven2.com has pretty rock solid prices and a ton of space and toys like gallery installations and stuff...you can purchase your domain name there as well for like 8.88 a year, and hosting is like $6 a month or something cheap enough to not worry about. MUCH better than a comcast server i pormise you.

for client stuff though, i usually purchase my domain names through http://www.godaddy.com and just direct the dns towards the hosting we setup later on so if there is a hosting change later on, i can swap the dns with ease ever time.

[Timm]

I second Blinking8s' recommendation of GoDaddy for domain name registration.

As for hosting, if you want to move, give http://www.jatol.com a look. These guys are superb with brilliant support should you need it, loads of self-install scripts (including Gallery, Coppermine and 4Images Gallery), MySQL, PERL, PHP, E-commerce capability - the plans start from $30/yr with the only differences being the storage/bandwidth.

[Carzee]

Think up a name that is easy to say down the phone to someone. When I was into HF radio I used to listen into radio skeds for yachties and cringe at the majority of names which would only be understood after phonetic spelling of names letter by letter. Imagine a may day alarm where it takes 10 minutes to get over what your boat's name is.... there should be a law.

Anyway, get a bit of creativity going with a few drinkies.... if nothing else works use the famous David Bowie lyric writing trick. He would print out a single page with lots of words and phrases just jumbled up -in no order at all. He would then get scissors and cut out each word individually from the page, line up the nouns, verbs, etc... then start lining up random words beside each other to make phrases - whilst enebriated of course .... solid gold.