site to buy domain

Don't have specs on who to go thru, but here is a consideration. Buy the IP address from a different place that you buy the domain name from. The Management Morons at work, switched ISPs, yet the didn't tell the new ISP that they had a small domain name that also needed to be moved. So come the move, all mobile users can't get access to the mail server (and the new ISP was in no hurry to fix the problem that was our fault). The better thing would have been to have an independant domain name provider indepenant of the ISP. That way when you got the new ISP address, you go into the Domain keeper and edit the DNS yourself.

www.domainreg.com
www.networksolutions.com

You don't "buy" the IPaddress. When you find your server that you want to host your site, they will give you the IP address. Try here ....www.webmasters.com

Check out http://www.mydomain.com

Great service with some great features including e-mail forwarding, IP forwarding etc.

Domain names are $14.95 a year.

It used to be that you went through Network Solutions exclusively (before they were bought out by VeriSign) to purchase domain names. Now, there are several registers of domain names, including tucows, opensrs, register.com, and so on.

This site looks like a good deal for hosting, but I have not tried them, so do some research before committing.

http://www.ehostsource.com/

Originally posted by Ryan
This site looks like a good deal for hosting, but I have not tried them, so do some research before committing.

http://www.ehostsource.com/

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Don't forget, hosting a site and owning a domain name are two different things. You can own a domain name but can have it hosted anywhere you want.

Originally posted by Pro-Com
www.domainreg.com
www.networksolutions.com

You don't "buy" the IPaddress. When you find your server that you want to host your site, they will give you the IP address. Try here ....www.webmasters.com

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He didn't specify if he would be hosting his own site with his own equipment (thus buy/lease the IP address) or have it on one of their servers like you said. Granted finding a hosting site sounds like it would be better for his friend.

Originally posted by Chris Blount
Don't forget, hosting a site and owning a domain name are two different things. You can own a domain name but can have it hosted anywhere you want.

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And that can be a sticking point. If he has it all done by one entity, the host sites may retain ownership of the domain so if he wants to switch host sites, they may say "Well we own the domain, if you want to keep it you have to stay with us (or we can charge you a nice fee to take it over). So make sure whatever you do with the domain, YOU are listed as the owner (no so easily done as said)

Thanks for all the good suggestions. I figure the lowest cost way for now is get the name and perhaps use my free homespace on AOL suggesting customers call her directly. Once it starts covering its costsa she can get internet access and her own leased space wherever. AOL provides the space for free and thats a plus this is a puppet ministries group with little money.

My friend cares for our pets when were away, she is one of only 2 good friends left from high school.

Many people use their AOL space for small business pages. Depending on how big the name is. A name like

pages.aol.com/~bhalller
isn't too bad. But sometimes you get something like
pages.aol.com/members/satellite/~bhalller/hello.htm
can be annoying.

Well could it be princepuppets.com? That is the name of her business. Then host it however on AOL? I created a screen name for her on my account so she can work on it frm here. Although Since she knows zip and I dont know much it will be me getting this set up. Thas OK it will be a great learning experience... I always wanted to build a website.

Bob,

My suggestion would be to go to http://www.mydomain.com . Purchase the domain name for $14.95 a year (actually $30 up front since you must pay for the first two years). After that, it's just a simple matter of logging on to the mydomain web site and pointing the address to the URL wherever the web site is located. Then whenever someone types in http://www.princepuppets.com , they will automatically be forwarded to the web site on AOL. It's that simple! You will also have domain e-mail like [email protected] .

Friend of mine uses http://www.namesecure.com for his forwarding and domain registration. Seems to be much like Chris' solution. I completely agree with Chris that you should find a place that forwards your domain name and http://www.namesecure.com and http://www.mydomain.com both do that. At least now you have a couple of choices...

Thats the key Bob, if you let AOL do all the work (if they even want to do all the work), they may assume ownership of princepuppets.com. And it can be a pain if/when you leave AOL to get it moves to wherever. But if you get the domain name yourself like described above and the domain name is just fowarded to whatever address you like, you can move the hosting to anywhere else and the domain only changes when you tell it to. The only "hard part" will be making sure that you type in the correct info at the Domain Name registering place that points to the AOL web page URL.

Wow this sounds great and easy. Thanks for helping so much. I will register it today, and as soon as I can get something small up. As a start. For her its not so much this making money but every callers says wheres your website. Her computer is a 9 year old dinosaur, she has no web access and I offered to help out after others talked a lot and didnt do anything.

I will definetely register it one place and seperately have AOL host it for now. So theres no problem getting it off AOL someday.

Any advantage disadvantages to buying the domain .com as well as a different one like .net? Other than the cost?

Sha asked me about that and if the different ones really mean anything?

Being a ministries it wouldnt be good if someone set up a porn site on a very similiar domain

Once I get the domain purchased and set up aol page how lng till its active?

I agree that have a domain and redirecting is a good way to go. It leaves you with great flexibility in the future. You can move your site to a new host and change the redirect and it all done. You could even develop a new site, change redirect, and if for some reason something isn't right with the new site, just change the redirect back to the old one.

I do a similar thing with my email. I have an email service that I then forward all my email to my ISP address. If I ever change ISPs, I don't have to let eveyone I know, know, ya know?

Originally posted by Bob Haller
Once I get the domain purchased and set up aol page how lng till its active?

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It takes a matter of hours from the time you edit the Domain setting to point to the URL till the entire world can access it (24 hours is expected just to be safe)

When we recently made Domain Name Server (DNS) changes at work, within 1/2 an hour everyone in Earthlink.net had access to it. But we needed it to be accessable to AT&T Global access, and that took over 4 hours for those users to be aware of the change. It really depends on how each ISP is setup.