A friend suggested some special deal from yahoo, at 10$ american, a year for a 3 year term, but I have my doubts about the 'specialness' of that deal. I've seen prices much lower. Whats the best place to buy a domain name from?

why do you want to pay ? you want a special domain ?

just a creatively named .com (which I know won't ever be taken). I'm looking for reliability, as well price. And I have no clue about what certain companies give you that other do not..

EDIT::
Another question: private vs public registration? how many problems would I get if I went public? would I have to submit my real address/phone number?

It's totally dependant on what you want to be able to do.

It's very cheap just to get a domain name "parked", that basically means it gets placed within the DNS Records of a company that gets it for you, and they you have the ability to point it to either a IP, Domain or URL reference.

However the drawbacks that usually occur there is if you run CGI scripts etc on your site and you want them to work with the domain name you've purchased rather than the IP/Domain that you currently have the site housed on.

This means you could choose a package where you get an amount of space with the domain name, which too can have it's uses for dealing with this CGI problem and potentially gives you some free POP e-mail accounts for the domain too.

However I have to admit when I'm dealing with domains for do things with, I end up a bit of a control phreak.

This means I want control over my domain's DNS record, so I can decide where my mail server is, what subdomains I have and where they point to etc. This can be hosted by companies similar to Parking a domain although most companies tend to do it with the actual hiring of a Dedicated server which then becomes known as that domain.

You might want to check out www.DYNDNS.org since they cover domain name parking that can actually be pointed to your home computer with an application. (so you could serve something at home. It's also compatible with some types of router)

Thanks alot, Stryder :cool: I'll check that out. Hopefully I'll have my domain by the new year.

well, I've done it :)

www.dyslexitek.com

now to build it.

-Thanks again for the help

Just to give you a bit of a hand, most servers will be rigged to use either "index.html or index.htm" as the main page that is loaded by default which is placed in the ROOT folder.

Index pages nowadays are usually Splash screens, or pages for deciding what you want loaded when you view a site, although there original use was to be how they are named, an Index. Basically like the Hub page (The centre point of a wheel, where all other pages are at the other end of the spokes) of your overall website.

Bots and Spiders find it far easier to navigate your site if the index page is worked like that, and also if you include a "ROBOTS.TXT" file in your ROOT folder too.

There are two types of hyperlinks you can write into a HTML page I'm not going to explain the whole ANCHOR tag just the URL syntax.

The first is RELATIVE like just naming a page in the same folder as the one thats calling it.

i.e.

contact.html
../contact.html (If you were in a "higher" folder)

Secondly there is ABSOLUTE URLS, like:
Http://www.sciforums.com/index.html


Hopefully the rest you should be able to work out either with Tutorials or a decent HTML editor (Something like Dreamweaver or Hotmetal)

Just have to put in a recommendation for GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com) as a registrar (I don't host with them). They're pretty inexpensive as well. Their interface for configuring your name server is a little obscure at first, but that's my only complaint with them.

Thanks again. You guys have been very helpful.

As you can see, www.dyslexitek.com is now up! I've learned quite a bit about being a webmaster in the past month, and have some pretty big plans for the site. One of them a php based replacement for 'simcityscape' being coded as we speak (#opensimcityscape irc.freenode). And some other neat things.

for hosting try
www.web-mania.co.uk

500mb
unlimited pop3
no baners, pop up

all for £20 a year

Thanks, :)

but because of the nature of my site, even that won't be enough. So I've decided to go with hostony.com.

My only worry is that they're based in the Ukraine..which could lead to a few problems. That or midphase.com

I've considered some of the more popular ones such as ipowerweb, but they don't provide enough mysql databases in the basic plan, plus I've only heard bad things.

info for whoever: http://www.dagdot.com has been the cheapest domain registrar and they have excellent support. I think they are a affiliate of godaddy...??? back to my pathetic life!

I use namecheap.com now.. Excellent service.

Oh - and still going with Hostony, although the quality isn't as great.

i did a webpage for someone through godaddy.. it was for a busniess and so they had signed up for everything first, domain, some other little add-ons like the shapping cart feature.. all i have to say is WHAT A PAIN IN THE ASS. ive built pages before. add godaddy is terrible if you want more than a name.

You might go looking for repair outlook (http://www.oemailrecovery.com/pst-repair.html) and data email recovery (http://www.mail-repair.com/mail-recovery-service.html). I have been using it without problem since it came out.