So you want to have your own website at www.yourname.com ? Now for that you do not need to sign up with a host who gives you a free domain name. Free domain names is one of the most common traps web hosting providers get people with !! Domain names and webhosting do not need to be bought from the same provider. How webhosts provide free and cheap domains is that they cover the cost in their hosting charges which you pay per month. So even if they charge a dollar extra a month for hosting they easily get out the cost of the domain. And I would recommend you to register your domain name with a registrar different from your web hosting provider. Why ? Because you can and because it gives you the flexibility to move around. If you are somewhat new to the hosting world .. this information could help you.

A domain name can be registered at any of the domain registrars .. popular and reliable ones being register.com , networksolutions.com (more expensive ones), godaddy.com, domains.yahoo.com (cheaper options). I use godaddy.com for domains and had a great experience in the past few years. If you are not sure if you would like to keep the domain for more than a year, you can go with yahoo domains which offer specials for one year registration price of around $2.xx !! But when its time to renew they will charge you around $10 !! No specials or discounts then !! Best is to go with godaddy .. search on the internet for coupons .. and you should get an easy dollar off .. and domains can be registered and renewed for around $7 per year !! The domain registrar provides you an interface to specify the webhosts name server. So you can go for any cheap domain hosting .. just fill in your webhosting providers name server name or ip address ( web hosts will provide you this info) at your domain account and you are all set with your domain registration.

So the next time you change webhosts, just log in to your domain registrar account and change the name server to your new webhost. To avoid any downtime to your website, ensure that you cancel you old web hosting account only after the new host is already setup and people can reach your new webhost. It takes around 24 hours for the new host information to get updated all over the world.

So bottomline is .. do not fall for free domain hosting … just buy your domain for around $7 a year and get some cheap webhosting. How to get very very cheap webhosting … you can get great hosting packages for less than $2 a month … How ? check out the next article.

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