Features

If you're not listed as the registrant, you could have difficulties proving that you're the owner of the domain in the event of a dispute. You could even lose the domain if your registrar goes out of business. Some registrars offer to insert their own details in these fields to protect your privacy.

This is unnecessary, because if you're a business your address is a matter of public record anyway, and if you're a private individual you can opt out of having your personal address listed. Ask about this if you're concerned, and before going ahead with a registration, confirm with the registrar that you will be listed as the registrant. Don't let anyone tell you it's just a formality.

Who owns the domain is a different matter from who has physical day-to-day control of it. That will be your registrar. Different again is the address to which traffic is directed (sometimes called the 'domain destination'). Initially, this will be somewhere on the registrar's server, so when someone types www.namesurname.com into their web browser, they'll see a page with that company's branding, informing them that a customer (you) has booked this domain. When you get your own website set up, you can switch to this, as we'll discuss shortly.

Having your own domain brings benefits for email, too. Once you have a domain name - say, namesurname.com - you can set up an email address of me@namesurname.com, which is a lot better than something like user32429592@nameofisp.co.uk. Not only will your email be easier to remember and look more professional, but it won't be tied to your ISP. If you switch to a new service provider later, you can keep the same

ADVERTISEMENT

email address. Depending on the facilities and fees of your hosting provider, you can set up several email addresses within your domain, perhaps for members of your family or colleagues.

Using your domain

Many web hosting providers advertise low-cost domain registration as an incentive to new customers. You can book your domain and then 'attach' whatever services you need to it, such as web hosting. If you already have email and web space with your ISP, you may not need any extra services. To make use of your domain, the minimum facility you need is 'forwarding'. Domain forwarding means you can point your domain name to a different web address, perhaps for an existing site that you're hosting in your free web space or a blog that you've set up using an online service that provides its own hosting.

For example, if you create a blog at Blogger.com, by default it's hosted at blogspot.com. This is a free service that comes with a Blogger account and can only be used for Blogger content. Your blog's address will be something like nameofmyblog.blogspot.com. Now let's say you register your own domain, namesurname.com, and you want to make your blog appear at this address. Your next step is to instruct the company through which you've registered it to forward your domain name to your blog. This can usually be done very easily through an administration interface that you access via your web browser. Once you've found the relevant option and set it, the change may take a day or so to come into effect. From then on, whenever anyone types www.namesurname.com into a web browser, they'll automatically go to nameofmyblog.blogspot.com.

Email forwarding means that you set up an email address within your domain, such as me@namesurname.com, but instruct your registrar to forward all email received at this address to another one, such as your existing ISP email or Hotmail address. This is a quick way to implement a new address without having to reconfigure anything. You'll want to set the return address on your messages, though, to show your domain email. That way, people will get into the habit of using it, and if you later change the address you're actually using, you can just forward to the new one.