How to Get Your Website Domain and Hosting

If you understand domains, then you know their importance to websites. For this reason, you also need to go through domain registration, which is the process that you go through to secure a website domain, or the site address. Once registration is done, you are the owner of the domain for the period that is provided in the contract. In order to keep your website up, you should ensure that registration is renewed before expiration, or else the domain is made available to the public again.

Unique When you want to get your domain, it should be unique and mapped properly on an IP address. The IP address is the numerical address of the website that tells other computers on the internet where to find the server host and domain. Your registrar and be able to let you know whether the domain name that you want has already been taken; if it is not, then the domain is available for registration. You should also ensure that the registrar you pick is legitimate, and that you, and not the registrar will own the domain name at the end of the day.

Registrars You can get your domain from a number of registrars, but ensure that they are accredited with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). This is the body that manages the international Domain Name Server and ensures that all registered names are unique. Registration will require that you give your contact information that is made public on the WHOIS database. It is therefore important that the information be accurate.

Website hosting Once domain registration is complete, it may take a few hours to a few days to see the domain online. However, you could also have the domain 'parked', where you can have the domain held until you can come up with your site's content, which should not be expensive. After registration, the domain is hosted on a web server, which means that you require the services of a web host.

In some cases, you will find that a domain registrar also offers web hosting services. This makes it much easier to get your website up in comparison to getting a web hosting provider once registration is done. Many established web host providers also offer cheap domains that can be hosted on their servers, making the process of registration and getting your website up and running much shorter.