Step 4: Domain Registration
This page explains how to choose the right domain name for you.

Registering Your Domain Name
Before you can do anything else, you need a domain name. This can be a very dull and boring process, simply because the best names are always taken, so be prepared to spend hours searching for the perfect name. There are plenty of domain name registering companies on the Internet, many of which offer good low prices and almost all offer a quick search facility that allows you to check if a name has been taken. We used register.com who charged about $35 a year per domain name. When registering your domain name with your chosen registrar, you should be careful that you are not signing up for any hosting or email packages. If you want to host the site yourself, it would be a complete waste of money to pay for any extra packages.

Free Domain Names
Although a domain name is probably the best and most professional approach to owning a website, some people cannot afford or do not require this luxury. However, there is another approach that still gives you the ability of self hosting for free. A company called no-ip offer a free service which allows you to use a sub-domain of various domains as your domain name. If we decided that we didn't want to pay for www.code-crafters.com, we could have had a free name such as www.code-crafters.hopto.com. Our emails would also have looked like user@code-crafters.hopto.com and would still work with all the same potential.