Registering a Domain for My Blog?

[MattusMaximus]

Howdy all,

It seems that my blog is getting more and more traffic these days, and I'd like to go to the next level & register a domain for it. A couple of questions:

1. What's the most reputable place to go, in your opinion, to register a domain? I have a domain in mind, and to my knowledge it isn't taken yet, but I want to make sure that I don't get hooked up with some screwball company.

2. My blog is currently at Wordpress and gets top hits on search engines. If I register a domain, is there a way to link it to my blog so that I don't drop in the placement on the search engines?

Many thanks in advance for your assistance & advice!

Cheers - MM

[Brian-M]

1. What's the most reputable place to go, in your opinion, to register a domain? I have a domain in mind, and to my knowledge it isn't taken yet, but I want to make sure that I don't get hooked up with some screwball company.

It would depend on what country you're in. If you were here in Australia, I'd recommend www.name.com.au (http://www.name.com.au) (you can go there now and check if the name you have in mind is already taken -- it probably is). I don't think the problem is finding one that is reputable/reliable, but one with facilities that suit your needs (assuming you'll be hosting your blog website through them).

If you want, you could keep your blog at Wordpress and just have the index.html for your personal domain name redirect all traffic to your current blog.

[MattusMaximus]

If you want, you could keep your blog at Wordpress and just have the index.html for your personal domain name redirect all traffic to your current blog.

Yes, that was the idea I had. But how do I go about doing that?

[rightbrain]

Just about any ICANN-accredited registrar--and there are tons of them--will do for registering a domain. Many offer basic web hosting as well. Of course, you don't need web hosting if you're simply going to forward the domain (see below).

For a reasonably priced, reliable registrar, I often use Namecheap.com. I've also used Dotster for years for domain registration for my own sites and several client sites. They're fine for that, but probably not for web hosting. A lot of people like GoDaddy, but I'm not fond of them.

If you plan to have no content at your new domain and want it to simply redirect to the blog, you can just forward the domain. Forwarding is easy to set up through your domain registrar's account.

If you want to have a website or webpage at the new address and forward some pages to the blog, you'd use an htaccess file, but how you set it up would be very specific to the particular pages involved.

[tesscaline]

1. What's the most reputable place to go, in your opinion, to register a domain? I have a domain in mind, and to my knowledge it isn't taken yet, but I want to make sure that I don't get hooked up with some screwball company.
Well, our company uses Network Solutions for domain names, and has for a good 10 years. Not the cheapest out there, but definitely extremely reliable and easy to work with.

I would say that I do not recommend GoDaddy. We've had interactions with a number of people who have had ridiculously horrible experiences with them in all manner of ways. Ways that hurt their businesses, and cost them money they couldn't afford.

[Stray Cat]

The only advise I can give is to avoid Easyspace... I've had nothing but trouble with them, they charge way more than most and offer a poor level of customer service.

[KoihimeNakamura]

http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/register-domain/

[BenBurch]

Howdy all,

It seems that my blog is getting more and more traffic these days, and I'd like to go to the next level & register a domain for it. A couple of questions:

1. What's the most reputable place to go, in your opinion, to register a domain? I have a domain in mind, and to my knowledge it isn't taken yet, but I want to make sure that I don't get hooked up with some screwball company.

2. My blog is currently at Wordpress and gets top hits on search engines. If I register a domain, is there a way to link it to my blog so that I don't drop in the placement on the search engines?

Many thanks in advance for your assistance & advice!

Cheers - MM

All registrars are pretty much the same.

GoDaddy is who I usually use because they are at least a USA company and the prices are reasonable. I wouldn't go with them for hosting. You can easily forward a domain to your blog, and if you want other hosting for it, I have servers and bandwidth.

Now, a plug, a friend of mine is a GoDaddy reseller; http://www.oneldomains.com/

[paiute]

I have had good luck with GKG.

And don't search for the name you want to buy until you are ready to buy it.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Whois-Hijacking-My-Domain-Research/

[MattusMaximus]

I set up something with GoDaddy, and I forwarded the domain to my blog. But I can see that my new domain doesn't yet redirect to my blog. How long does it usually take to propagate?

In addition, my blog is hosted at Wordpress, so is there anything in particular I need to do on that end?

[MattusMaximus]

Never mind. It works now :)