I’ve found that domain registration and management can be a conundrum for many of our clients, especially if they’ve never had a website before. I recommend godaddy because it’s the cheapest registrar I’ve found. Buying a domain from godaddy is about as easy as any online purchase, but just make sure to click “no thanks,” on all the extras they try to sell you. Most of it is stuff you’ll never need and I’ve never been impressed with godaddy hosting.
Many times, people ask us to register their domain for them. We can do this, but there are a few reasons to consider when making this decision:
- You don’t need to be beholden to me to renew your domain when the time comes. Many times, renewals on godaddy can be performed with one click of the mouse.
- If I haven’t talked to you for ten months and you move or change your e-mail, it will be a sweet hello when your website goes down and you find that you’ve lost your domain.
- If you decide to change registrars in the future, You’ll have to go through a tedious process with the new registrar. Registrar transfers are a pain.
The good news is that registering a domain takes ten minutes and you can set your domain to auto-renew (yes, you do have to renew your domain every year, unless you register it for multiple years). Just go to godaddy.com and enter your preferred domain in the search box. This step can be tricky, but godaddy will give you suggestions if yourname.com is already taken. Obviously, you want to get a simple domain with a .com or .net extension, but this isn’t always possible. Hyphens are allowed in domain names, but not underscores. After you find a domain that’s to your liking, just add it to your cart and complete the registration process as if you were buying from any online store. Godaddy will issue you a login, which you need to store for safe keeping. Make sure to use a secure password.