Staking Your Claim on the Internet - A Tutorial

Let's say that you want to get your prime piece of real estate up, running and available on the Internet. What do you have to do? This is how I did it, with just a dream and a credit card, and some pretty easy research.

(I do not receive any compensation from any of the third party companies).

Pick your domain name

Your domain name is used to locate the computer that provides services (such as the world-wide web pages, email or ftp). If you domain name is skraba.com, your web pages are usually at www.skraba.com.

• Any domain name registrar can be used to tell you if your domain is available. I like to use GANDI.
• Checking the availability of your domain name is free.

Pay your registrar

You pay the domain name registrar to ensure that you have exclusive use of that domain name. The registrar also keeps track of the DNS (domain name server) that is used to locate your services on the internet.

• I use GANDI as my registrar because they are competitively priced (at 12 euros or about $17CAN) and because of their straight-forward terms of service. You can buy your domain name by filling out a form on their web site (they use a secure third party to do credit card validation).
• PowWeb offers domain name registration at $15US (about $22.50CAN) a year, but also offers the first year free if you take the web hosting package with them. If you plan on hosting there (see the next step), this can be pretty efficient and convenient.
• You can find hundreds of other registrars pretty easily.
• You can now "park" your domain, which means that you stop the process here. Your domain is unusable, but it is reserved for you. GANDI allows you one email address redirection and automatic web site redirection for parked domains.

Pay your web hoster

This third party is responsible for saving your web pages on their server and providing other services for your domain (such as ftp or email).

• I use PowWeb as my web host. For $7.77US or $11.50CAN per month, you get 650 megabytes, 650 email addresses (including web mail access) and very easy configuration. If you let them know I sent you, I get two months free service.
• I don't use AnfyHost but they appear to have a great budget service at 15 megabytes and one email address for $1.49US or $2.20CDN per month. You have to pay a year in advance, and they have a one time setup fee of $20US/$30CDN.
• You should shop around to get a good value for your requirements.
• As well as holding all your data for you, your web hosting company usually provides you with an IP address. This address looks like 209.150.20.63 and is functionally equivalent to your web site address.
• You can sometimes access your services by IP address immediately (http://209.150.20.63), even if the next step (DNS) hasn't completed yet. Many web hosts (including PowWeb) won't work by IP address alone, so you have to go to the next step.

Set up your DNS

You go back to the registrar pages and change the authoritive DNS settings. This lets other computers on the internet find the IP address and services associated with your domain.

• GANDI has a form that you need to fill out with the correct primary and secondary DNS server names, as well as their IP addresses. You need to get this information from your web hosting company. From PowWeb, the information is:
  • Primary DNS: ns3.powweb.com (63.251.213.33)
  • Secondary DNS: ns2.powweb.com (207.212.16.4)
• It can take up to 72 hours for your domain name to "percolate" to the point where every computer on the internet can find the correct IP address.

Start using your domain

You'll usually be given an FTP address, which is a protocol for transferring your files to the new domain. You can see the default pages they've given you and update them as you desire.

Hooray for the Internet!