I'm thinking about getting a domain name. The only place I know of to get one, though, is godaddy.com. All of my google searches for alternatives looked kind of shady. Is there anywhere else I should know about?

And how exactly does setting this up work? Is there just a control panel or something I can put my server's IP address into? I would assume it would be easy, but I also assume that most people buy hosting instead of running their own box.

And GoDaddy don't look seedy to you? I've never used them myself, though have heard fairly bad things about them (pop "godaddy sucks" into your favourite search engine - something I find that works quite well for just about any service provider or product).

For what it's worth, I tend to use 123-reg, though they are UK based.

Usually, yes, you'll get a DNS control panel page where you can set up your records (IP addresses and the like). If your web host provides their own name servers you may also be able to use their name servers rather than the name servers of your domain name registrar, which can make things easier to manage, though if it's just one site it probably wouldn't make much difference.

Very cheap domain name registrars can limit you a redirect or frame-based wrapper around your site. Check that whoever you register your domain with offers a proper DNS service.

Although the site doesn't look the most reputable, I've had Cemetech at http://www.namecheap.com/ for the past five or six years, and thus far I've had no complaints.

I've heard good things about gandi, but can't speak to the actual quality of service as I haven't used them.
If price is anything to go by, they must be good..

I use name.com myself. I've also used godaddy, and I don't really like them.

I have to speak for GoDaddy on this one. I've called them twice and got on the phone with someone in the US both times, at early hours in the morning and late hours of the evening.

Aside from the in-state customer service, I'm really pleased with their domain name tools. I can easily change the name servers (and have). Other than that though, I've had no contact with GoDaddy.

Gandi is awesome. GoDaddy is a terrible, terrible place. You get what you pay for.

000webhost.com provides free web hosting and a sub-domain.

The domain name isn't free, and if it's anything like free hosting I've had in the past, you get advertisements on your site.


And, if you scroll all the way down. You'll note a spelling mistake. "Frequency Asked Questions" should be "Frequently Asked Questions." I'm sure there are other mistakes.

I use 1and1 for my two domain names, but apparently if you want to switch it takes a long while. I'm not sure if Aspiration Hosting (which I use to host one of my site) is good for domain names, although for hosting they're generally not too bad (they do not oversell).

And indeed, as nikky shrewdly observed, you get what you pay for, especially with free services.

I use Hover and 1&1; haven't had issues with either one. I also use services like https://domaintyper.com/ to find domain names...

I don't know how I feel it's a good idea to use the same service for your hosting and your domain-name hosting, but to each his own.

I would, but 1and1 offers private domain registration for free and charges $1 less a year than Aspiration Hosting for .org domains, so when I switched my main site to the other hosting provider, I still kept its domain name on 1and1, along with another site.

Yeah, but aren't you marginally unhappy with 1and1?

For hosting, yes, but domain names, no. (Although even for hosting they're not too bad if your site is just HTML or hardly get any traffic)

Right, so I was thinking that if you decided to move your server hosting elsewhere, you'd have to move your domain elsewhere as well.

Nah, since 1and1 has both domain names and hosting packages. I still have my old 1and1 hosting package, where's located my MTV Music Generator forum, but it gets about 70K-100K hits a month so it doesn't suffer from many downtimes compared to when my other site was there too.

I just had to change nameservers settings.

I've had good luck using Godaddy for my domains, except they email me constantly.

I would never use them for web hosting though. I think next time I need more hosting, I'll set up one of those free Amazon EC2 accounts.

That seems pretty attractive, but don't they charge a sizeable amount for bandwidth?