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Master of your domain! If you're serious about a professional Internet presence, then you need your own domain name. A domain name is a word or phrase that is tied to the IP address of the server or servers that provide your web pages, email, FTP, or whatever other services that are part of your web presence. How's it work?Think of the domain name as your name and the IP address as your phone number. If the only thing that was on your business card was your phone number, it would be difficult for people to locate you if that number changed. But as long as they had your business name, they could find your new phone number by using directory assistance. In essence, that's how Domain Names work. When you register a domain name, you must provide the IP addresses of the DNS (Domain Name System/Service) servers that contain the translation between your domain name and IP address(es). When someone types "www.yourdomain.com" (just an example) into their browser, the DNS servers kick into action, find the IP address of your web server, and load your homepage into the visitor's browser. All this magic, however, requires that the IP address of your server(s) doesn't change very often (for the reason why, read this). This isn't a problem if you're using any sort of webhosting service, since they'll assign you an unchanging or "static" IP address when you signup for service. However, if you're trying the do it yourself method of web (or any other type of) hosting/serving, you'll probably find that your ISP provides only a "dynamic" or changing IP address. Not very long ago, this would have killed your chances of doing your own hosting. But where there's a problem on the Internet, there are usually some enterprising people out to solve it, and this problem is no exception. The answer is Dynamic DNS services and you can read more about it on this page.
This "new domain world order" is still shaking out the bugs, but there are now many places where you can buy a domain name. InterNIC keeps a list of accredited domain registrars on their Web site, and I recommend you stick with choosing a company from that list, unless you let your webhosting company do the registration for you.  NOTE: Read the information carefully when signing up for a domain through any of these services. They would all love to lock you into their service (instead of a webhost of your choice) and their packages can be confusing. Don't sign up for any service that doesn't make the cost and service clear, and don't pay more than $35/year to register your domain. Call me old-fashioned, but until the dust settles, I'll stick with using NetworkSolutions. If you don't want to do your own registration, most webhosting services will do it for you when you sign up for service. Some charge for doing this in addition to the usual domain registration fee of about $35/year, others include it as part of their set-up fee. Another
way to get a domain name is to use a Dynamic
DNS service. These services usually include a subdomain of
your choosing with their most inexpensive service. This domain name
will be based on their domain name or some other domains that they've
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