There have been a lot of requests in the cozy mailbag for a how-to article on domain registering and hosting. Never fear dear froggers, help is here. In the next few paragraphs we’ll cover all the basics from buying your domain all the way to how to get it live on the Internet.
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"Don't pay for any service or product until you fully understand the consequences of your expenditures." |
We always tell you to go slow when it comes to spending money for your new adult venture. Don’t pay for any service or product until you fully understand the consequences of your expenditures.
For instance, if you decide to buy hosting space for the galleries you submit to TGP sites, you need to be able to cover the bandwidth/transfer costs on any gallery that is listed. You could receive literally then of thousands of hits from a good gallery. Depending on the file sizes of the thumbnails and images, one gallery (highly listed) could eat a gig of bandwidth in a day. If all that traffic results in zero sponsor sign-ups, you’re losing money.
So when you are ready to take the plunge, how is it done? How do you get a domain name for your site? How do you find hosting for the domain? How do you get your domain to point to the DNS server on which your hosting account resides? Let’s break it down step-by-step:
Find/Create a Domain Name
There are many sources where you can buy an already existing domain name. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to concentrate on a domain name that you’ve created yourself. If you’ve thought up a cool domain name and want to be sure that’s someone else has not already registered it, it’s best to perform a DOMAIN NAME LOOKUP. You can do this at almost any registrar service but for certainty’s sake the best place to perform a DOMAIN NAME LOOKUP is at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number’s lookup site at InterNIC (http://www.internic.net/whois.html).
Type in the domain name you want to research with it’s dot com extension, i.e. yourinquiry.com. Click the submit button and wait for the results. If the result page states NOT REGISTERED, you’ve got a winner. If the dot com TLD is taken but the dot net isn’t, seriously consider creating a different domain name. You could face copyright troubles if you snag the dot net version of someone else’s dot com. Besides, you want to be the clever one who registers the dot net TLD in order to protect their snappy dot com.
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Another advantage to starting your domain adventure on the InterNIC site is that they also host a page listing ICANN approved domain registrars (http://www.internic.net/regist.html). Some popular domain registrars are Dotster.com, Register.com, DirectNIC.com and GoDaddy.com.
Make sure the registrar is adult friendly. Most of them don’t care what name you register but some ban certain words and terms for domain names. Always read the Terms of Service and/or User Agreement of any registrar.
They easiest way to get to the "buy" page for your domain name is to repeat the LOOKUP process on your registrar’s site. They all have this feature, usually at the top of the home page. When you type in your domain and click the search/lookup button, you’ll get a resulting page. That page should say something to the effect: HIS NAME IS AVAILABLE. BUY THIS DOMAIN. Click the purchase/buy link and you’ll get a page presenting to you with various payment options and most likely an online registration wizard-like series of pages. In the steps that follow you’ll be asked to provide your contact information.
Make sure you supply the correct name and address because that’s an ICANN rule. No fake emails. No nicknames. Have your credit card ready because you’ll need it for payment purposes.
Some registrars will hold your registration for a small period of time while you mail in your payment but it’s easiest to pay with a CC. Once your card and your payment are accepted, you will be the proud owner of a brand new domain name. Well, for a while at least. You have to keep up the payments to your registrar if you want to keep your domain. You can buy registration for one, two and as much as ten years at a time.
If you do not pay up when re-registration time comes due, your domain will become property of the registrar who will sell it to someone else.