17 of 26

Thanks to my wife, I was off to DreamHost to register my domain name.  After using their tool to make sure that the domain name was available (phew!) I set up my account, gave them my credit card information, and created the domain.  I got a confirmation email that said “Your domain should be registered within 30 minutes, and you will receive another email confirmation when complete!”.  Sure enough, 10 minutes later I was notified of a successful registration.  Yay, I had my own domain!

Now the only thing left to do was to set the DNS information for the domain since I wasn’t also using DreamHost to host my domain.  However, before I could do that I needed to head over to Host Gator and set up my web hosting.  The process there was very simple as well.  I created an account, chose the hosting plan I wanted and gave them my credit card information.  Within a few minutes, I received a confirmation email telling me that my account was all set and they gave me the IP address and a temporary URL I could use to access my domain until DNS was properly resolving my domain name.  They also provided me with the DNS information that I needed to give to DreamHost.

Armed with the DNS information from Host Gator, I logged onto my DreamHost account and updated the information there.  DreamHost said it may take up to 24-48 hours for the DNS information to propagate.  Being the impatient person that I am, about an hour later I opened up my browser and typed in “17of26.com”.  It worked!  All I got was a blank HTML page because I hadn’t set anything up yet, but my domain was alive.

Next:  Configuring my Domain

The first step in creating this site was to decide on a domain name registrar and a web host.  Fortunately, my wife (who definitely does her research!)  has owned several domains for a while now so I just asked her who I should use.

For a domain name registrar, her answer was DreamHost.  Their registration fee is fairly standard ($9.95/year) and they offer a privacy service which hides your personal contact information from WHOIS queries.  This was definitely something I would want and is not offered by all registrars – I was (very easily) convinced.

When it came to the web host, my wife suggested Host Gator.  I did a quick comparison of their prices to DreamHost, and Host Gator was significantly cheaper.  A basic plan that hosts one domain is $4.95/month if you pre-pay for 3 years (per month costs are a bit higher for shorter terms).  They’re also currently having a 20% off summer sale if you sign up before August 1st.  I signed up for two years and with the 20% off I felt like I got a pretty darn good deal.

Next:  Creating 17of26.com