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Registering your domain name is painfully simple and wonderfully cheap, so there’s no reason for you to depend on a web guru to do it for you. I mentioned in a post yesterday that I met a couple of women who are running a business but feel they’re no longer communicating effectively with their web developer. To me, that’s no surprise (we’re grumpy) but it spurred me to think about myself and some of my clients both past and present. What it made me realize is that a lot of the time, people ask me to do things because they don’t know how, not because they’re trying to compound an already frustrating day. With that in mind, I thought I’d uncloak a bit of the mystery and tell you that even you can register a domain name.

Registering your domain name is painfully simple, first you have to pick a provider. Personally I choose either GoDaddy or Domains At Cost, the latter is for doing .ca domains (yes I am Canadian). It really doesn’t matter where you register your domain as long as they’re a reputable firm. The cost of registering a domain is can range from $4.95 some days (on sale) to $19.95 with bigger companies. In my experience the two providers I listed above are ~$10 per domain.

Step one in registering your domain … see if it’s available. This can be a pretty frustrating part of the puzzle but when you find the right domain for you, register it. Simply use the domain name search form on the providers website and search. Remember, domain names can not have spaces in them or special characters which means, you must use either alphabetical letters or numbers in your name.

Step two … registration. Painfully simple, just fill out your details and submit it. During the process you’re going to be bombarded with special offers, promotions and deals for associated services. They’re not part of the domain name process, so ignore them. Simply buy your domain name and be done with it.

That’s it. You’re done. During your first domain name registration, it should take about ten minutes. On your second, about two.

Some options you might be asked about (and what they mean):

1. Hosting – almost every domain name registration service will try to sell you hosting. You can take it or not, it’s up to you. Personally, I rely on hosting at BlueHost and strongly recommend it to people. In it’s most simple form, hosting is like renting space at the local mall. A domain name is like a street sign but hosting is where you store your website for the world to see.
2. Privacy – Once you register your domain name, people can search and find out about you so some companies offer Privacy, it’s a quick scare tactic to convince the person to pay more for the year (about $10 a year) to hide their contact details. My advice? Use a fake address if you don’t want people to mail you stuff, a PO Box if your really concerned or if what you’re registering should never be associated with you … figure out why you’re registering it. Blogging Tips has a great article on this one.