Bandwagon HQ

Assuming you already found a good host for your blog, you’re now ready to register a domain name for your site. You may already have a really good idea for a name in mind, but chances are that someone else already came up with that ‘one of a kind’ name. Companies, individuals and cybersquatters have been snatching up one word dictionary names left and right for many years now. If you’re absolutely stuck on obtaining a one word name, then you should also be aware that you’ll probably be set back a few bucks for naming rights. You may get the absolute name you want, but it will cost you.

Thinking of a unique name

Even if you’re completely willing to change your original name, be prepared to come up with several alternatives. It took me quite a while to settle on BandwagonHQ but in the end it should just be something simple and catchy. A combination of two short words could work for you. It won’t matter too much if you purposely spell it wrong, either… Cork’d, Flickr, and Stockpickr are examples of very successful sites that simply left out a vowel. In the end, all that mattered was that the site offered a worthwhile service to its customers. It certainly does help to have a memorable brand name, though.

If you are having trouble coming up with a name, try using NameBoy to have their service generate one for you based on keywords that you provide. You might be surprised by its results and find an idea that you never would have thought of.

Feeling creative? Think script.aculo.us.

Registering your name

Multitudes of sites offer domain name registration services. How did I find a good company to go with? Well, I simply google’d for ‘domain name registration’. For the sake of simplicity, I stuck with only looking at the first page of the 23,800,000 results available. Some bare-bones registration sites offer $1.99 registration to first time customers, while the average price is about $7. I actually splurged a few extra dollars ($3 extra to be exact) by going with a service provider I knew I could trust—Google.\

Mapping your domain name to your host

This step may be unnecessary if you went with an all-inclusive host like DreamHost. Assuming you went the same approach I did, you’ll need to update your settings where your domain is registered. Your service provider hopefully provided you to a link to eNom (or wherever your name may be registered) where you can log into your domain name’s administrative control panel. Once you are logged into eNom, try to find the section on DNS Information where you can update your Primary and alternate domain servers. For HostingRails, these servers will probably be something like ns1.hostingrails.com, ns2.hostingrails.com and so on.

Mapping your host to your domain name

I hope you signed up with a host that supported cPanel. It really takes that pain out of administering a site on a shared host. The final thing you will need to do is add your new domain name as a ‘parked domain’ on your shared host. You may want to verify with your host if everything looks normal. Everything may look normal to you at first, but they’ve probably got a lot more experience in dealing with n00bs.

And don’t sweat it if you can’t get the exact domain name you want. You can always be creative and get close with a couple of extra letters (e.g. backpackit.com or campfirenow.com). -37signals, Getting Real