Domain Names

Buying and managing domain names

Registering

.Com domain names can be had for as low as about $7 per year but the problem is usually finding an available domain that works for you. In many cases the domain I want is already registered so I end up making an offer to buy it from the owner through services like Sedo.com or I will go and backorder the domain at Pool.com if I'm not in a hurry. I've gotten many good domain names through Pool.com for about $60. I even picked up some personal names I care about that had been registered for 10 years before they were not renewed.

I don't usually bother with other domain extensions. Dot com has more cachet than .info, .biz or any of the other TLDs. However when I want to create a website in France or Canada, I usually try to get the .ca and .fr domains in addition to the .com. I think .mobi has potential if people come to realize that .mobi usually carries a version of the .com website that is specially designed to work well on a phone-based browser.

DNS Settings

When you register the domain, you may not necessarily host the website with the same company where you bought the domain. In this case you'll need access to the DNS (domain name server) records. Here you can specify the IP address to which a request for your domain should go. For example, when hosting on Amazon EC2, I add the dynamic IP address of my Amazon server in the A record of the DNS. Now I also need to send and receive email reliably and Amazon's EC2 doesn't really handle email very well (because their dynamic IPs fail a lot of spam filters) so I have a dedicated server at 1&1 where I create the mail servers for domains whose websites are hosted by Amazon. To achieve this, I set a DNS record for smtp.MYDOMAIN.COM and point this to a dedicated IP address of my 1&1 server. I then set the MX record in the DNS to smtp.MYDOMAIN.COM. On my Amazon server, I update the postfix config file (main.cf) so that it uses my SMTP server when sending email.

Parking Domains

WhyPark