There are many places you can go to check out names.  I will use Go Daddy as an example.  They are the web hosting company I use and recommend to my clients.  Their prices and service (7x24x365) are great and they sponsor Danica Patrick.  'Nuff said!  However, if you want to look for other providers, google "domain name registration".

A web hosting company has many many (that means lots) of computers and large hard drives that store all the software that creates the websites you visit while surfing the web and the emails sent to those sites.  They also search for and register domain names.  Remember from the previous posts that domain names must be unique.

Now Go Daddy's home page (and most of the others) is very busy.  In the middle of the page, just to left of Danica Patick and just above her elbow is a blank space to enter the domain name you want to research.  There is a drop down box to the right of the blank space where you select the designator (.com, .me, .name, etc.).  Enter the domain name and select the designator you want and click the red Go! button.  When I entered "plaitsolutions" and selected ".com", I got  PLAITSOLUTIONS.COM is already taken. (click here for info).  Below that is another blank and drop down box to try another name.  Keep trying until you get something like PLAITSOLUTIONS.NET is available!  (Notice I tried plaitsolutions.net the second time.  That is a totally different domain name from plaitsolutions.com.)

You will now be bombarded with options for other domain names.  Ignore all that and go to the bottom of the page and click the "Proceed to checkout" button.

You will now see more sales options.  Skip them and find the small print in the middle of the page that says "No, thanks.  Continue to checkout."  Click it.  You will now come to a page that is called Domain Registration Information. 

At the top of the page, select "I would like to create a new GoDaddy.com account".  Fill out all required information on the page.  Then click the "Continue" button.

On the next page, verify that all information is listed correctly, then click this page's "Continue" button.

The page you are looking at now says Registration and Checkout Options.   Here is where you have to know what you are doing.  Your domain name comes with one email account, meaning one email address with 100MB of storage.  For most people, that's enough.  Jump to the next paragraph.  If you want to add more, you can select either "Deluxe" or "Premium" in the last column.  Deluxe gives you five more mailboxes and 1GB of storage, where Premium gives you 100 mailboxes and 2GB storage.  These are mostly for businesses, but if you expect to need more mailboxes or need more storage space, these are your options.  Select one.

In the cell marked "Registration length", you can choose 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 years.  Choose one.

Moving down the page, select personal as the type of registration.  Under that, I strongly suggest you select "Deluxe" for your plan type.  You can go up one, if you want those features, but DO NOT select "Standard".  The reason for this is privacy.  If you do not make your domain information private, you will get tons of spam.  I get almost no spam.

If all you are looking for is an email account, click "Go to checkout" at the bottom of the page.  If you want to host a website, Click "Customize my domain".  This post is not about web hosting, so you are on your own from here.

On this penultimate page, make sure "private" is selected.  Make sure the correct number of years is selected.  If you changed anything just now, click the "Update cart" button.

Now enter your payment method and check the three checkboxes at the bottom of the page after reading the items you are saying you read.  I selected 5 years of domain registration, and the cost was $94.50.  That is about $19 per year.

Click "Checkout Now" and you are done making your purchase.  You know own your domain name for as long as you selected and paid for.  

Keep in mind that these instructions are for GoDaddy.com ONLY.  However, the information given here should be enough to help you navigate any other web host's site.  If you have trouble, email me (sid_plait"at"plaitsolutions"dot"com - use the "@" instead of "at", and a period instead of "dot") and I will help!

In the next post (the last one!), I will tell you how to set up the mailbox!