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Ask HN: Tips on domain registration and website setup
14 points by lele on Nov 27, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments
I'm going to register a few domains and setting up websites on them. I've read whatever I've found out about that, however there are some issues I've not been able to find recommendations about. Here they are.

Reliable mail address for communications from your registrar

This seems to be paramount: you need a mail address you will not risk losing. Thus, you'd better use a reliable (paid) mail service (for instance: fastmail.fm). Right?

Privacy

Your phone number will be publicly available, therefore you'd better buy another cell-phone card and use its number, so that you will not be reachable by random people.

Some registrars offer to hide your contact info, but then they will own of your domain. This is not recommended, since ownership of your domain is a must. Right?

Switching hosting

As soon as I register the domains, I'd park them. Will I be able to switch hosts at will from then on? I think I could end up using a VPS for maximum flexibility, but I'd prefer starting with a cheaper - maybe free - option (with limited available services).

Thank you very much.

EDIT: I'm not interested in parking domains to sell them afterwards. I'm going to use them eventually, but currently I'm a newbie at web programming and I'd just like to acquire them ASAP (as I've seen it's recommended).



1) Reliable email addresses: If you think about this question for five seconds that is about four too many. Gmail and you're done. (Word to the wise: don't get that account compromised.)

2) Privacy: I really didn't mind having my information theoretically out there until the first time I got a call from a Romanian high school student asking me for advice on setting up his software business. I actually don't mind giving advice to people, but the 4:30 AM wakeup call was unanticipated.

Private registration does not mean "the registrar owns your domain". It is quiiiiite the racket for GoDaddy et al, but the overwhelming majority of large-scale domain buyers I'm acquainted with avail themselves of it.

Hosting: Orthogonal to who you register the domain with. All registrars will let you change the DNS settings for the domain to point to your DNS server of choice. For example, GoDaddy has all my domains pointed at ns1.slicehost.net, etc. From there I configure what machine the domain resolves to by changing DNS records at Slicehost.

Note that changing DNS records is essentially at will but it is not instantaneous. If you do it to a production website you have to take some care to avoid service interruptions.

Edited to add: You exhibited some interest in parking. I would not get your hopes up -- the domains which are available for registration these days generally do not generate the level of type-in traffic to make appreciable amounts of income. The folks who make money through parking do it because they control super-premium domain names or portfolios with 100k+ domains in them. Given your current level of understanding of the field, you're not nearly ready to make money merely by possessing domains, so you can get away with not worrying about this factor at all. (Instead, I would suggest putting up a mini-site on the domain and then putting at least one decent link to that site ASAP to start it aging like a fine cheese. This is mostly for SEO reasons.)


(Instead, I would suggest putting up a mini-site on the domain and then putting at least one decent link to that site ASAP to start it aging like a fine cheese. This is mostly for SEO reasons.)

That is definitely one of the most interesting SEO analogies I've read yet.

I'll just add a little bit about what a decent link is: Google is smart enough these days to tell an "artificial" link from a "natural" link. As a result links from the sidebars or blogrolls of other websites, link from signatures and most links from profiles are not decent links and will do very little to affect the rankings of your domain.

However, one or two links in the body of a blog post or web article can be worth hundreds of blogroll links. Note however that the content of the blog post or article must be closely related to whatever the content of the website is.


Source?

oogle is smart enough these days to tell an "artificial" link from a "natural" link. As a result links from the sidebars or blogrolls of other websites, link from signatures and most links from profiles are not decent links and will do very little to affect the rankings of your domain.

This makes no sense. As a blogger, a link in my sidebar on every page is far more valuable than a single link in the body of a post.


I hope it is not true, but apparently in normal circumstances, domain masking (privacy) works as intended, but only in disputed cases would ownership issues comes into play, for more details, see here: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20081120_whois_masking_conside...


I dont really understand this line "Some registrars offer to hide your contact info, but then they will own of your domain." They simply create a alias for your details and show their own details. Just to hide it from public view. However when you will do business with some parties, e.g. payment systems etc, they usually want to be able to the proper whois details for a domain. And not a anonymizer profile.

I register domains via namecheap.com, decent service, reasonable priced only systems sometimes at certain times a bit sluggish. They also have a fun marketplace, where sometimes you can buy some fun domains for little price, 4 char .com domains etc

And i agree with patio11, start the aging process of the domain, the faster the better.


I dont really understand this line "Some registrars offer to hide your contact info, but then they will own of your domain."

That's what I've read somewhere: since contact info associated with your domain points to your registrar (or web host), you have given up control. Is that correct, or you'll keep full control and ownership of your domain? Thanks.


Have a look at this page; it is a decent summary of one identity masking service (given merely as an example, although I've been happy with namecheap). As they state, you retain ownership of the domain. They merely serve as a proxy public contact.

http://www.namecheap.com/learn/privacy-protection/whoisguard...


Domain registration: Dynadot. Not sure if this is the best option, but they are fairly cheap and not as insane to use as godaddy. (Edit: By insane, I mean Godaddy's interface is very confusing.)

Privacy: If this is a real concern then pay the $2.00 extra a year per domain. You still own the domain.

Reliable mail + Hosting: webfaction, very straightforward hosting environment, I simply forward all my email to gmail, gmail simply acts as a proxy for my real email address.

Switching hosting: Most hosts offer a DNS service, you'll simply register the domain with the new host and supply those new details to Dynadot. (Or whomever you're registering with).


I have several domains on netfirms.com. I'm not entirely convinced that their service is good. In fact I'm suspicious that they are perhaps overpriced and my websites seem to be slower than everyone else's... so I don't exactly recommend netfirms. But I can tell you that they offer a privacy setting for free at the click of a button. This hides all your information on whois.


Personally, I hate GoDaddy it's a company that rips you off. For domain registration I use Name.com for many years now and I'm very happy with it. Plus, you can hide your contact details for free, where is GoDaddy charge you for that. Of course, you can easily change your DNS settings: All of my domains point to ns.linode.com.


"it's a company that rips you off"

Citation needed...


http://nodaddy.com/


gandi.net offers all you need. I use that for all my domains.




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