Domain Names
So you want your very own www.you.com or
www.yourcompany.com domain name eh? How about you@yourcompany.com or sales@yourcompany.com
as an E-Mail address? This is like totally moving into the big leagues, like getting your
own car instead of driving dad's minivan, like moving out of the house for the first time,
like ... like ... awesome.
Registering your own domain name is pretty simple. It's
controlled by a company called InterNIC, they handle all the registered domain names.
Before we get into how to get your own domain, we first have to take a few steps back so
you'll understand this stuff a little.
When you type in an easy-to-remember address, for example
www.quadzilla.com, the domain name is translated into an IP, for example
206.20.138.104, used by the world's biggest network, the Internet.
This is done by DNS. Keep in mind your ISP will
have to "claim" the IP through their Name Servers (DNS). Words are easy for you and I to remember, numbers are easy for the
computer to remember.
Getting your own domain will cost you $70 which will last
for the first 2 years. This is the cheapest and shortest amount of time a domain can be
registered. After the 2 years they invoice you $35 per year. Most Internet Providers will
charge you a setup fee which is usually no more than about $50 if you'd like them to take
care of it. This can save a lot of headaches and be a lot quicker, but if you really want
to tough it out, keep reading.
As of April 1, 1998, Internic lowered the new domain
registration fee from $100 to $70, and the renewal fee from $50 to $35.
The first thing to do of course is to think of a domain.
Let's assume your company's name is Quadra Corporation which is a leading business
machines manufacturer, and you've been "granted" the responsibility of creating
your corporate web site. When it's time to get the domain you'll need to find out if it's
available first. You can do this by using a UNIX command called "whois". Some
obvious things that comes to mind are
- quadra.com
- quadracorp.com
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- quadramachines.com
- businessmachines.com
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| Note: you can also
substitute .com for .net |
After doing a whois on the above domains you'll find that 2
of the 4 domains listed are available; quadra.com and quadramachines.com.
You can query a Whois server to access this information a few
different ways:
You may be thinking "I don't want quadramachines.com, I
want www.quadramachines.com". The www is just used to identify a machine name (the
web server) in that domain, which is why my E-Mail address is djquad@quadzilla.com, not djquad@www.quadzilla.com.
Domain names can be a total of 26 characters (quadzilla.com has 13 characters), and can
contain letters, numbers, or dashes.
The complete process of how I
registered htmlpowergrid.com
- I went to the InterNIC Registration Tool and
started filling out the form.
- The first part is pretty self-explanatory, I filled in my
E-Mail address, Domain name, New Registration (radio button), then proceeded.
- Step 1 - Organization information was entered as follows:
- Organization Name: Phil Iovino (this would be your company
name)
- Organization Address: 127 West Berry St., Suite 700
- City, State, Zip: Fort Wayne, IN 46802
- Country: US
- Step 2 - Purpose of Domain. I entered "A software
resource for Web Development"
- Step 3 - Technical Contact Information. This is typically your
system administrator or webmaster. In my case I put my contact info:
- I left Contact NIC Handle blank since I don't have one. This
is just an ID that saves your info so you don't have to keep filling it in every time you
register a domain.
- The rest is self explanatory.
- Step 4 - Administrative Contact. This is typically you. This
page is self explanatory.
- Step 5 - Billing Contact. This is typically you. This page is
self explanatory.
- Step 6 - Domain Server Information. Check with your system
administrator or webmaster about this because this must be correct, but a way to find out
is to do a whois on another domain that the machine your site is going to be on. The
Domain Servers are listed towards the bottom.
- Step 7 - Review the info and make sure everything is correct.
- A template was E-Mailed to me about 20 minutes later. I read
the Domain Name Registration Agreement.
- I created a new message to hostmaster@internic.net. This
message contains the same message subject, as well as a copy and paste of the original
message.
- About an hour later I got a confirmation notice and a tracking
number.
- About 10 minutes later I got a message saying
"Registration for the domain name shown below has been completed". This was very
quick, it can take up to a couple days. I also noticed my new Contact NIC Handle was
listed also.
- It may take a while for the ISP to update. They can't point a
domain until your domain comes back when you issue a "whois yourdomain.com" from
your shell account on their server.
- The final step is to contact your ISP and ask them to point
yourdomain.com to your directory, for example http://server.provider.com/yourdirectory.
Look Ma, I just registered my own Domain!
Some helpful hints related to Domain Names
- Never allow the ISP to request the InterNIC to transfer your
domain, until you have copied your web at the new ISP. Try your web at the new location to
make sure that everything is working fine at http://server.provider.com/yourdirectory.
Then, and only then, should you ask the ISP to request the InterNIC to make a transfer.
- You should always be the
Administrative Contact and/or the Billing Contact. Never allow your Provider to be listed
as all 3 Contacts. If they are, they totally own your domain name. You can't move your
domain to another Provider unless they say it's ok, and it's perfectly "legal"
for them to say no.
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