Broadband Tech > Webhosting > Domain Name Purchase

Domain Name Purchase

You mean you want to own your own domain name? Then you can use any registrar to register the domain name itself. You don't need anyone or company to do it for you.

Then you need hosting. Your ISP may give you free web space, but that is not the same thing. They give you web space on their domain so your location would be something like "www.yourisp.com/~yourusername.

If you want to make use of your own domain you should go with a private hosting company. That is where the actual website will reside and be served up.

For example: I own my own domain. I registered the domain name with GoDaddy.com and I use Hostgator.com for my hosting. I'm not promoting either of those companies. I'm just using them as an example. There are plenty of good companies out there that do both those things.

reply to billycar

so what is www.name.com ? referred to by who.is?

That question does not compute.

www.name.com seemed to be a direct seller, but I guess not.

who.is made the referral, and I thought they were somewhat not motivated by monetary income.

I'll continue to shop around.

The registration fee is how it works, no matter whom you choose to do business with. You can probably find somewhere to pre-pay for 20 years so it won't feel like an annual fee, but it still is. Microsoft does it, IBM, and everyone else.
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When the zombies come, he will be waiting.

I guess what I am asking, perhaps again, who is the Registrar? Each Hosting Company (GoDaddy.com, Name.com, etc) goes to the Registrar, with my (or a) Fee, and Registers my domain name. I don't have access to the Registrar?

Just trying to understand the process a bit more.

reply to jester121

reply to billycar
The terms are being thrown around here a little loosely so let me repeat what I said above and hopefully it will make more sense this time.

HOSTING companies do not register domain names. REGISTRARS do. If you want to buy (register) a domain name such as www.yourdomain.com then what you do is first go to a REGISTRAR that is authorized to do so by the internet authority; such as GoDaddy or similar.

After registering your domain with a registrar then you go to a hosting company and buy some hosting ... if you want to. You can theoretically host it yourself on your own PC but I have done that and it is a pain and far beyond the capabilities or hassle level of the average user.
The hosting is where that actual website files will reside and be served up to any visitors that visit your domain.

The reason that this can be confusing is that often times registrars also sell hosting and hosting companies can be authorized registrars too. But these are two separate things. You can have one company as your registrar and another as your hosting.

Think of it like a car. You have license plates and the car itself. The dealer can get your plates for you but that does not make him DMV. And you can buy a car from the state (like at an auction) but that does not preclude you from going to DMV and getting plates. And in order to drive your car on the street you need BOTH a car AND plates.

All good info from Sentinel, and I like the analogy.
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When the zombies come, he will be waiting.

reply to billycar
I am looking for those that simply register my domain name, and won't try to sell me another truck.

Then possibly help me figure out how to connect it to my artsite on mysite.verizon.net/moonstoneartstudio (my ISP (verizon.net) and not so cordial, HOST, who has recently dropped ftp, but still lets me keep my artsite out there, although it is currently frozen in space).

All will try to sell you what ever they can. Caveat Emptor. It is up to you to know what you need and should be buying. Sounds like all you want to do is to register a domain name. Any registrar can do that for you . Just don't click to add anything other than the registration.

Now with regards to your hosting; I don't know anything about Verizon or how they do that or if they do that. They may not allow that kind of thing. However, you could always just set up a forward on your domain tools to forward anyone from your domain to that website.

reply to billycar

I recently purchased "www.moonstoneartstudio.com" through name.com for $9.99 a year. It seemed to be the simplest site of them all.

At name.com, I then used "URL Forwarding" and pointed it to my artsite which now resides for free on dropbox.com. Having it there, I can modify my copy of it on my local disk, using Golive, synchronize it to the copy in the Dropbox folder, also on my local disk, and it gets automatically uploaded and synchronized to that on my Public folder on the web at Dropbox.com. All free (except for my time). I could probably skip the local file synchronizing ... I just like the idea of keeping a separate work copy from the public copy.

I am still awaiting a call back from Verizon, to get my site removed from their web space, as I cannot touch it, even with their thing called Site Builder.

I also have a Redirect index.html file ready to move to the Verizon area, except they have to help me with that also ... as far as I can tell, their SIte Builder doesn't allow for self-written html.

Problem almost solved.

(Along the way, by expressing my frustration, badly, I have become banned from the Verizon Forums. No big deal. I see people, places and things get removed from this Forum, too).

reply to ff1324



www.MoonstoneArtStudio.com

reply to billycar
You can pay $10 for the domain and get free hosting at Google Sites, assuming you want to use the kind of sites you can make there.