Registering a domain name is seen by many newcomers to the web as a really complicated, highly technical task that the average mortal cannot do.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

You only need to bits of information on hand when you register your domain name:

- What you are going to call this domain

- and your web hosting DNS values, these are give to you by your hosting company and look something like:

NS1.WEBSITEWELCOM.COM and
NS2.WEBSITEWELCOME.COM

They are almost always provided to you in pairs.

So first go to a reputable domain name registrar. I suggest using either www.Better-Domain-Names.com or www.Godaddy.com

These may not be the cheapest registrars currently on the web but their service, and reliability are incredible. I generally work on the principle "You get what you pay for", and never a truer thing can be said about domain name registrars.

OK, lets walk through the process of registering a domain name:

Using your web browser, visit a domain registrar. Usually on the front page there is a search option to check if the domain name you want is available.

Lets say for example, that you are trying to register a domain name for your Dog Training website.

So you type in dogtraining.com press enter, and it comes back that that domain is already take. Now, I would suggest that you place prefix and or suffix words to the domain name you are after. So you could try:

betterdogtraining.com
bestdogtraining.com
dogtrainingnewsletter.com
dogtraininganswers.com

You could also try placing dashes "-" in your domain names to separate words. Admittedly, there are a group of search engine optimization people who currently believe that the search engines are now starting to penalize sites with 'dashes" in them. Another thing, sites that do not contain dashes and do not have any numbers in them, generally seller for a higher price. So if you think you might sell your domain sometime in the future, then it may be advisable to avoid using both dashes and numbers.

Lets say, that you find dogtraininganswers.com is available. So you move to the next page. Generally this asks you for the details of the person that is going to be the owner of this domain. Generally this will be your name, address, phone number etc.

Next the system will ask you for how long you want to register your domain for, the minimum period is 1 year and the maximum I have seen is 10 years. Most people go for the 1 year period, only because it costs the least. On the Better-Domain-names.com screen and the Godaddy.com page, you will see a link that says: "If hosting your site elsewhere, please click here to set name servers"

Please set your name servers now (using the name server values given to you by your hosting company), otherwise if you have to come back and change the default name servers at a later date. the problem is that it generally takes a long time for the name servers to propagate around the net and you could wait several days for this to happen. But if you set them now, they should propagate within a few minutes, maybe half an hour at the most.

Once you have keyed in *both* name servers values, you then move onto the payment screen where you key in your credit card details.

Here you may see an option called "Auto Renew". Check this box! This allows you to renew the domain automatically when its term expires. Any good domain name registrar should send you an multiple emails before the domain is set to expire, and if you take no action on these emails, then the domain will get automatically renewed. If you don't set this "Auto renew" option, then system will let the domain lapse and it becomes available for some else to purchase.

Once you press the "submit" button, it will take just a few seconds for that new domain name to be yours.