Now how is this going to work?  From their press release:

Attendees will have access to vendors, sponsors, exhibit booths, and other web hosting enthusiasts through live chat.  There is no software to install.  Attendees log in from their computer and listen to the sessions directly, pick-up a chat, read about exhibitor’s product and services information and network – all through the live chat.  Representatives will be available via live chat to answer questions and provide further information.

If you are interested in reserving your spot, you can do so free here.  Now I haven’t been contacted by anybody involved yet, so that is pretty much all the details I know, however I do have to say it is nice to see people trying to something new out there, and the more we can all share and learn from each other the better the web hosting industry will be.

Out of all the domain name finder tools out there, DomainTyper might be the prettiest one, to date.  The idea here is simple, type in a phrase, word or series of words you would like to register as a domain name.  As you type you will see if the .com, .net, or .org versions of that domain (as far as you have typed it in) are available.  You can also add other domain name extensions, if needed.

The fun doesn’t stop there though.  They also give you a list of domain name hacks you can try.  For example, when I typed in “Mitch” they suggested mit.ch and mitc/h as domain name hack alternatives.  Down the left side of the page, they have the “Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator” which seems like nothing more than a wacky list of oddball names.

If you want to add the domain name lookup to your own site, they give you the code to embed it.  Overall DomainTyper is a nice alternative if you are looking for another way to find your next domain name you wish to register.

Once you visit their web site, you put your mouse over a domain name for additional information. The color of each domain listed (and there are hundreds to choose from) is color coded based on availability and popularity.  Over 12,000 domain names listed to pick from, with 1,000 more added daily at 2 PM EST.

If you sign up for a Domain Pigeon account, you can effortlessly keep track of all the domains you are interested in.  For anybody who loves to collect interesting domains to use at a future date and time, Domain Pigeon is a resource well worth checking out.

Domain parking usually refers to a domain name that has been pointed at a single web page, that may have a “coming soon” or “under construction” message on it.  It is a hold place for a domain name you might not be using right now, but you still don’t want to error out when somebody tries to visit it.

Many domain name registers offer this service, because it can be a way to monetize.  For an example, let’s say I have a really good domain name,  but don’t have the time to develop it right now.  I park the domain name with my domain name register, and they let me put a few ads up there to make money.

The domain name is likely to get a lot of type-in traffic, so for the time being, that domain name will be making me a little money with no effort until I have the time to develop a web site for it.

So, as you can see, domain name parking does have it’s practical uses.

So what does a domain sniper do?  This is when somebody registering a domain name as soon as the domain name expires.  For an example, let us say I really wanted the domain name webhostingradio.com.  After doing a WhoIs search on the domain name, I find out it expires on February 19, 2009.  So I wait until that date, and then pick it up myself as soon as the registration runs out.

The fact is though, that this can pretty much be considered extinct, for now.

Thanks to ICANN’s Redemption Grace Period (RGP) registrants are allowed 30 days to reclaim their domain name.  Before the RGP went into effect, the money made in domain name sniping was done when the sniper would try to extort money from the original registrant to get their domain name back.

Now let us fast forward, because unfortunately GoDaddy refuses to raise the bar…

• 2006 = Another Super Bowl Controversial Commercial
• 2007 = Another Super Bowl Controversial Commercial
• 2008 = Another Super Bowl Controversial Commercial

Ok, so GoDaddy has kind of run the idea of having a pretty girl in a controversial commercial into the ground.  They shoot a commercial, tell us the Super Bowl commercial gods refused to air it, release that one Online and then give us a “censored” one for the Super Bowl.

So that brings us to today, and myself reading a press release on theWHIR’s web site:

For its fifth consecutive year advertising during the NFL championship, discount hosting provider Go Daddy has shot two racy new ads this week featuring IndyCar driver Danica Patrick, to appear in the Super Bowl, following NBC’s approval.

Oh joy, another couple of racy ads for the Super Bowl.  Let me guess, one is “too hot for TV” and the other one is “just right for the censors”.

“We have two options and they’re both absolutely ‘GoDaddy-esque,’” Go Daddy chief executive officer and founder Bob Parsons said in a statement. “They are fun, edgy and slightly inappropriate; surely network censors will have a sense of humor, people could use a good laugh these days.”

Come on GoDaddy, I was behind you the first year, waited for the encore the second year – but after that I think you have run this idea into the ground.

The bookmarking service, del.icio.us started an entire trend of unique looking domain names that has continue to this day.  Mixing domain names, with extensions (and sometimes tossing in a subdomain) has made for some memorable and unique domains.  So what is the secret?  There are two services that allow you to type in a phrase and then figure out different ways it could be registered and setup.

Domai.nr and domainfinder.geekfg.net both offer this service.  My favorite out of the tool is Domai.nr – so let us focus on that one for now.  For example, lets say I typed mitch into the search box and hit enter.  Some of the domain name suggestions I got were:

• mit.ch
• mit.tc/h
• m.it/ch

They also give to you the registers for that domain type, the wikipedia entry for that top-level domain type and tools, where you can see the web site (if the domain is taken) and a link to do a quick WhoIs lookup.  They also have a blog and Twitter account to follow, so you can stay inside the loop with development.

There is a business out there based around the buying, selling and developing of Internet domain names not to reap the rewards of the web site, but instead to gain a profit on the resell of the domain name.  You can think of it as real estate.  Lets say you buy three houses, fix them up – but in all reality, you don’t need three houses – so you sell off two of them, after fixing them up.

A domainer (somebody in the domaining business) often builds up a portfolio of domain names, according to various criteria.  Most domainers sit on their stack of nice domain names, and don’t do anything with them.  They just keep them as an investment for the chance of reselling them later on down the road.  Now you might ask, how is this not domain name squatting?

Well, domain name squatting is more related to trademark infringement.  Those who stay on the legal side of things will stay away from domain names that infringe on intellectual property.  However, as with any business there are areas where the good guys and the bad guys mesh together to make a gray area of business.

As of December 2006, there are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 individuals globally who make buying and selling domain names a part of their business.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 169!
Running Time: 10 minutes | File Size: 4.39 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• Find Secret Data Center Locations!
• How Was That Web Site Made?
• HP Performance-Optimized Datacenter
• What is Domaining?

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Aplus.net Launches Community Forums
• GoDaddy Goes After Illegitimate Pharmacies
• The Planet Sends Notice About Security Breach

Happy to have you back here with us on the web hosting industry’s number one podcast.

GoDaddy has also released this response to the claims that there was some wacky stuff going on during the first day of .me domain name registrations:

We knew the .ME Open Registration response would be tremendous, but it went beyond even what we had expected. As a result, we experienced some system issues in our communication with the registry.

As soon as we became aware of the issue we began taking steps to correct it. It is now resolved.  For our customers, if we did not successfully register the domain name requested they will receive a full refund.

Now that the first week’s hype is over, it might be a little easier to search around and see what .me domain names you can register from GoDaddy.  Only problem your left with is, are all the good names taken already?

Domain name front running would be the practice of using insider information to register domains for the purpose of re-selling them to the pubic, or by placing ads on the page in question and making money cause you know the domain is in demand.

For example, lets say I want to go register MitchKeeler.com, and I go search for it at well, insert slime-ball domain name register here.  Ok, so I use their domain name “check for availability” tool and they say it has not been registered yet.  Something happens though, I get distracted or move away from the idea and close the browser.  That is when the slime-ball domain register with go ahead and register the domain name themselves.  The next time I go to check, I see it has been registered but for $40 the slime-ball domain register will sell it to me.  In most cases the domain name register can do this for up to five days without having to pay for the registration of the domain name themselves.

The previously mentioned Network Solutions has defended the action by saying, “This protection measure provides our customers the opportunity to register domains they have previously searched without the fear that the name will be already taken through Front Running.” Still seems rather slime-ballish to me, how about you?

For example, if you were looking for web hosting you might try typing webhosting.com.  Who owns that?  It redirects to AT&T.  So anybody who takes this route would have an instant gateway into AT&T’s web hosting services.

These days when you type in a phrase into the address bar and hit the “enter” key you are taken to a web search.  Before 2002 though, most people were taken to that phrase with a browser placed “.com” at the end.  That is how this practice of Type-in traffic began.

If your looking to move into this marketing tactic yourself, you may want to keep a few things in mind:

• Stay away from copyrighted names. Trying to buy, for example “hewlettpackard.com” might get HP’s legal team after you for cybersquatting.
• Your wallet better be pretty fat. Getting a generic phrase top level domain name is not going to be cheap. Get ready to pay top dollar.

Type-in traffic, if you can get it going, can be a great way to get people to your domain with little to no work at all.

It is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.  At least that is according to the United States federal law on the issue, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.

Now when people are squatting outside of the digital realm we live in, it usually means they are living in an abandoned building or some other space that the squatter does not own.

Back to the Online side of things, cybersquatters will actually register and pay for the domains in question and then wave it in the face of the copyright holder and sometimes even put up really bad things about them in hopes that they will want to give them a big ol’ check to shut them up and buy the domain.

For more information on domain name squatting I would highly suggest checking out ICANN’s uniform domain-name dispute-resolution policy.

Ready for the Online tool that promises to provide you with the quickest domain name searching ever?  Domize.com is promoting themselves as the “better” instant domain search tool.  Do they live up to that hype?  Yes, they do!

There is no rocket science needed to use it either, which as you all know if something I like to see.  Just type in the domain name you have in mind and they will let you know if there is a .com, .org or .net version of that domain available to use.  Red means it is in use and blue means it is available.  If you hover your mouse over the red links, they will give you a thumbnail picture of that registered site too.  Find one you like?  Click on a blue link and you will be taken to GoDaddy.com to purchase.

All Domize traffic is secured over SSL, making sure your queries stay private and away from snooping eyes.

Another neat feature of this web site is you can search via your iPhone too.  Now why your searching for domains on your phone?  That is another problem I can even begin to get into here.  Nice to know though that if you get that big idea for the next great domain name you can check on it even if there isn’t a PC in sight.

So go visit Domize.com for more and let them know them know the Web Hosting Show sent you there.

“What is domain kiting?  I have heard it is related somewhat with domain deletion and AdSense from Google.  Do you know anything else about the process?”

What is Domain Kiting All About?

Domain Kiting is one of those terms that seems a ‘bit odd when your first hear it, but I promise it does make a little ‘bit of sense.  Think of it as you trying to fly a kite, it says up for a while then falls.  Then you put it back up in the air, fly it some more and you do this till you get bored.  In the domain name world kiting is the process of deleting a domain name during the 5 day grace period and then re-registering it for another 5 day grace period, and so on and so forth.  Then you just wash, rinse, repeat. 

How Does it Happen?

The reason for the 5 day grace period on domain registrations is to cover the customer just in case they misspell it, or decide they don’t want it.  As you can see though, this makes it very easy for scammers to play the system to their advantage.  Now these days domain name registers like GoDaddy and the like are becoming smarter to the process.  This process doesn’t really take advantage or hurt the honest users out there, it just cheats the proverbial domain name “man”.

How Do They Make Money? 

Now I noticed you also mentioned something about Google.  Here recently Google has said their AdSense program will be looking for domains that are “kiting” and drop these domains from being able to put AdSense ads up on those domains.  Hopefully by ending the chance to earn a buck – they hope to curb the bad guys from trying the domain kiting all together.

Once installed the addon to your browser gives you access to one click domain name searches at your favorite register. All you do is select some text in your Firefox window and hit the keyboard combination (Ctrl + Shift + D) or select it from the right-click menu. One of the really neat features of this extension is that it will strip out any non-standard characters and triggers for a domain search and also will work with GoDaddy, Moniker, Network Solutions and over 30 more.

You can download this addon right from the developer’s web site:

http://tools.qualitynonsense.com/domainlookup/

The Merger Begins

Lets say in this alternate reality, Bob Parsons (the man in charge over at GoDaddy) gets an offer he can’t refuse from the Google team. He decides to sell to Google for (well, insert large dollar amount here) and Google is now the world’s biggest search provider and the world’s biggest domain name register all in one smart business move.

A few months down the road, Google announces it will get into the web hosting game. They have the money, servers and resources to start doing serious web hosting at any given moment now. Some might say they already are with their page creator service – but I don’t really count that as it has yet to even really get any decent buzz. If they needed a base for it, they could always use GoDaddy’s hosting business as a starter. Yes, ladies and gentlemen we now have Google Daddy.

Google Daddy Takes Over Web Hosting

With their two tier plan, you can get unlimited disk space, bandwidth and resources for free. Then they charge you five dollars for a domain name and your web site is up and running. Where is the catch? Well Google’s main business is not search – it is advertising. To pay for the hosting, you will agree to put Google AdSense ads on your web site and split the profits with Google 50/50. They get half of your ad revenue (on top of what they take from AdSense profits already) and you get reliable free hosting.

The End is Upon Us

Over the next few months, web hosts would start to drop like flies. Nobody out there can compete with Google Daddy and in one year or so down the road (after that acquire the Planet, Rackspace and a few other dedicated server hosts) they control seventy-five percent of the hosting market. What Google was just a little over a year back for just search they are now for search, domain registration and web hosting.

That would be the ultimate doomsday scenario that would bring the web hosting world to its knees. Google Daddy controls the three things that pretty much defines the Web as we know it and there is not a major force that can stand in their way.

Whatever you do, be very careful before you search for your next domain name at Network Solutions. They have jumped in on the game of pre-registering domain names based on user searches. The hook? You decide you want that domain, you’ll have to register it with them.

Now I am not usually the kind of person to boycott anybody for their business practices, but I do have to say what Network Solutions is doing is pretty low down and dirty. Here are the facts thus far:

• If you search for a domain name’s availability with Network Solutions, they will register the domain name.
• If you would like to register the domain name you thought you might want after that point, you have to pay them $35/year for the domain name.

According to TechCrunch, this isn’t costing them a dime either:

This isn’t costing the company anything, either. Registrars are permitted to register domains for five days without paying any fees to the domain name registry (in this case, Verisign). If they delete the domains after 5 days, which they will almost certainly do, they do not pay for the registration.

Where is ICANN with this type of practice? I say if they were all over RegisterFly for what they were doing then Network Solutions really should not be treated any differently.

Related Reading:
DomainTools.com Blog – Network Solutions is Getting Better

Hi Mitch, great podcast I try to download each show weekly. I was bitten by the RegisterFly.com problems a while back and today while browsing to their web site it looks like they are still in business? How can this be?

RegisterFly’s demise as an ICANN accredited register was one of the biggest hosting stories of last year. These days you don’t hear much about it though. Technically, yes – they are and can still be in business.

Look Back at the RegisterFly Mess

Back inn 2007, ICANN launched an investigation of RegisterFly since there were a lot of allegations they were sticking it to the customer. With other issues and lawsuits that followed, the RegisterFly co-owners Kevin Medina and John Naruszewicz had a breakup of their own. The road was rocky, the public was mad and then it was made known by an unsealed class action lawsuit that there were claims RegisterFly defrauded customers trying to register or renew domain names.

According to Wikipedia, one of the early lawsuits within RegisterFly was pretty hilarious.

Meanwhile RegisterFly filed suit against Kevin Medina, alleging he had stolen company funds for a $27,000 escort service, a $6,000 liposuction procedure, a $10,000/month penthouse apartment in Miami, Florida and a $6,000 chihuahua dog.

March 31, 2007 was the date that ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) removed RegisterFly’s ICANN accreditation and told them to take the ICANN logo off of their web site. Skipping ahead though the legal mumbo-jumbo they could no longer act as a domain name register themselves and had to give up the domain name registrations they had done to ICANN. GoDaddy and other companies stood up and offered the RegisterFly refugees a home for their domains and that pretty much catches us up to the present date and time.

So Why is RegisterFly Still Around?

Well, this message from Robert O’Neal, Chief Executive Officer for RegisterFly should give you a candy coated reason:

We are an authorized reseller of domain names, the same as we have been for 6 years prior, this has not changed. We are NOT OUT OF BUSINESS as the message may imply to some.

So they can’t act as a domain name register themselves, like a GoDaddy can but they can resell domain names to you, like many web hosts do out there though a reseller service. This is how they did business before becoming an accredited register. So technically they are no longer a domain name register, they are just reselling somebody else’s registration services to you.

Have you ever gotten one of those letters in the mail from places like the Domain Registry of America? They are nice enough to send you a letter to let you know your domain name is unprotected, about to expire, is going to die a horrible horrible death – but they will save you. They will renew your domain name for you as long as you send them that check back in the mail.

Now many of us know to toss out this crap, because all it is – is an advertisement. Other folks though I am sorry to say are still falling for it hook, line and sinker. Now it isn’t the user’s fault. Nobody told them they would have to watch out for these types of scams. The name for this practice is domain slamming – and it is something everybody needs to be aware of.

In a way you could think of it as a form of domain name hijacking. Instead of hijacking the domain name and taking control of it, they just take over the registration of the domain. They make it sound like if you don’t reply you are going to lose your domain name. This is not true. If you respond back to them, you are making them your new domain name register. Your giving them your permission to switch over.

So we have now covered what will be lost. Now I bet you are wondering, how do they get your information? They can get everything they want about your domain from our good old friend, the WHOIS domain name database. That information if free for the public to browse, and has your name, home address, phone number and more. One more good reason to get privacy protection put on your domain name.

Here are some more links to help learn more about domain slamming.

• Wikipedia: Scams in Intellectual Property
• EasyDNS: Domain Registry of America Scam Letter
• Ask MetaFilter: Who Will Stop DRoA?

Slamming first started with the phone carriers. You would be with company A, then company B would tell you how much better their service is (sell it to you) and then ask you if you would like to switch over. Domain slamming is the same shell game – just played with different shells.

All that and oh so much more on this edition of the Web Hosting Show podcast.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 119!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 6.17 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Tips for Disabling “Index of” File Listings for Folders!
• Free File Hosting (Up to 1GB) With File123.com!
• Positives and Negatives of Cheap Hosting?
• Marketing: Free Layouts Are Traffic Hunters’ Gold!
• Who’s the Fastest Growing Domain Name Register?

Link of the Week: BlueFur.com’s Blog

From free file hosting to tweaks and edits you can make to your own hosting setup, we try to give and teach a little ‘bit of everything here on this show. What good is it to have a web hosting account if you are not using it to its full potential?

What about your .nl? Your .pt? You can’t forget about the .bf either. How you you lay your hands on an oddball domain name extension? Well listen up – I have an easy solution.

I don’t use Wikipedia for much, but this is one area where they really excel at. Here you can look up all the top-level domains and find out a plethora of information about each one. For example, lets look at the .at extension.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.at

Now you know that this is the internet country code top-level domain for Austria. It is administered by nic.at. Now by going to nic.at or any of the other domain extension administrators and find out where and how to register it.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 106!

Now which domain names are on the cutting block? Well it mainly has to do with eliminating domain names that are associated with countries that no longer exist. ICANN currently controls 265 domain name extensions, so as you can image – they are a little over due for a house cleaning.

The corporation says the Soviet Union’s .su is on the top of the list for deletion and the former Yugoslav republic’s .yu is also being taken into consideration. Some domain names that have already become obsolete include Great Britain’s .gb, which has been replaced by .uk, East Germany’s .dd and Zaire’s .zr after the country became the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Personally I think they could do away with .mobi as well for mobile devices. Nobody from ICANN or anywhere else has been able to answer my question about it. If you want to make a domain name extension that is easy to type in via a mobile device, why make it four characters long?

Typing those one or two extra characters just seems a little silly and it is not making my mobile experience any better.

+ Check Out the Podcast This Was From! Listen to the Web Hosting Show, Podcast 88!

Plus what are the differences between some of the domain name terms you see everyday? All that domain name goodness, plus some Web hosting thrown into mix makes for the 80th edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Podcast 80!
Running Time: 12 minutes | File Size: 5.74 MB

Welcome to the Web Hosting Show, the number one Web hosting podcast out there today. I am the .htaccess to your Web hosting directory, Mitch Keeler. As always the bandwidth for this podcast is provided by WebHostingChat.com so please be a good Web hosting patron and check them out as well.

I recently changed up my own blog some in the style department, and I am considering doing the same for WebHostingShow.com. Now that I have several jobs and projects going, I might not have time to do it all in one day though. This is where you come in though, what would you like to see “go away” or “come into” the new layout? I can’t promise a date that everything will be finished, but I can say I’d like to get it rolled out before the two year birthday of this podcast. So if you have an opinions on the matter, please drop me an E-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.

Don’t start sending your ideas in yet though, because you have a podcast to listen to! Let us get things started like we always do with the latest Web hosting headline.

Web Hosting News and Views

Google’s Blog Hosting Gets Hacked

Google’s Blogger publishing service experienced an outage the week before last, which kept Blogger.com and the Blogspot hosting service offline for two hours.

A hacker broke into Google’s main official blog on Saturday, hosted on Blogger, and posted a false message stating that Google decided to cancel a joint click-to-call advertising project with eBay. Google patched the bug by last Sunday and removed the hacker’s message, but not before it went widely noticed causing confusion among Google observers.

In a short note posted on Blogger Status, Google stated a “network malfunction” caused the outage. Google reports that no data was lost during the outage.

In early 2003, Google bought Blogger when it bought Pyra Labs. Blogger was once considered a leader in the blogging revolution but, according to IDG News, they have been criticized by some for not enhancing and upgrading the pioneering service.

Web Hosting Site of the Week

I found another AJAX powered domain name searching tool. Domjax.com might take over as my favorite out of all the domain name tools I have found thus far.

DomJax.com is the domain name search engine that tracks your domain name searches, so you don’t have to keep searching, copying and pasting. The name DomJax is a clever combination of “Dom” taken from Domain and “Jax” taken from the term AJAX. Web 2.0 techniques like Ajax and Dom-scripting were embraced to help enhance usability.

After you type in the domain name phrase you are looking for, you are given a plethora of options to play with. Not one AJAX domain name search tool has this many links to play with and do research from. I would list them all here, but for the sake of time it would be best for you to just go check it out and see them all for yourself.

The interface is clean, the results are nice, and they even have a blog where you can keep track of the latest happenings.

Q and A with the Web Hosting Guru

So what is the difference between a parked domain and an addon domain?

Now a lot of Web hosting companies these days are allowing folks to host multiple domain names from one account. Now where most people get confused is when the Web host starts throwing out all these terms that do not make much sense to the regular Joe or Jane off the street.

So what is a parked domain name? A parked domain name is when a domain name is pointed at the same spot your standard domain name is pointed at. Lets say you have mitch.org parked on top of mitch.com. In this case, anybody who went to either domain name would be directed towards the same Web site. Depending on the URL you typed in, the URL in the address bar should reflect the changes.

So what is an addon domain name? This is a nice tool to allow Web hosting customers to host more than one Web site from a Web hosting account. I could have WebHostingShow.com and MitchKeeler.com both being two different Web sites hosted at the same hosting account. This is usually done by pointing the secondary domain name at a folder on your Web hosting account.

For more domain name goodness, you might go search the WebHostingShow.com archives for more information.

Now you know what you are really getting with your Web hosting account. Most Web hosts are not trying to confuse you with these terms. The problem is that most Web hosting folks don’t understand that these terms are not very “user friendly” to the general public. So, don’t hate the Web hosting players, hate the Web hosting game.

Web Hosting Tip of the Week

Speaking of questions, here is a question that I get from time to time about domain name registrations. What do you do when you have signed up with a domain name register that has gone bad?

For the sake of making things easy let me give you an example.

Sally signs up with a domain name registrar in South America, but she doesn’t know that because it looks professional and nice. The South American domain name register goes out of business six weeks later, and sill has control of Sally’s domain name. So, most would say, “Hey Sally, go find yourself a new domain name – your pretty screwed!” but that might not be the case.

That is about time anybody in this situation should visit the InterNIC Registrar Problem Reports. From there you can report your domain name troubles, and if all goes well you might get control of your domain name back.

This is a resource I am happy to share, because not too many people know about it. So if you or somebody you know have fallen victim to a domain name register gone bad, don’t just take it. You need to take action.

Final Web Hosting Thoughts

Well that is it for this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show. If you want to interact with this podcast, it is easy to do.

+ Send me your audio questions or comments!

+ Go post on the Web Hosting Show’s Fan Forums!

+ Send me an E-mail with your thoughts on this week’s show!

Also, if you want to make sure you don’t miss a week’s episode, get our RSS feed and plug it into your syndication method of choice:

I am Mitch Keeler, and you have been listening to the Web Hosting Show, the number one Web hosting podcast across the nation and the one and only voice of the Web hosting world.

Download the Thursday Hosting Special!

Running Time: 4 minutes | File Size: 905 KB

I’ve told you about picking the perfect domain name and how to shop for that same domain name. What is next? We have to get that domain name and your Web hosting account talking to each other. We have to set up your new domain name so that when you go to it, it will lead to your Web hosting account. There are usually two ways this is handled. One is way is when your domain name register and Web host are the same and the other is when they are different.

When your Web host and domain name register are the same company, your job is usually a little easier. The reason this is an easier set up is because the domain name registrations and hosting are usually connected in one way or another.

For an example, lets say that you bought your domain name first, then your Web hosting. When you start putting in your information about your account while setting up the Web hosting, they will ask you for your domain name. When you do that, you are connecting the two accounts. Then when the Web hosting account is set up, the Web host has everything they need to get you up and running. Your domain name is already pointing towards your Web host’s DNS settings, so you have no more work here to do.

Now when your Web host and domain name register are different, then you might have a little harder time. When you sign up for your Web hosting, your Web host will give you some DNS numbers that you’ll have to give to your domain name register. These numbers tell your domain name to point towards the Web host’s servers. Once you have those numbers, you can usually sign into your domain name register’s Web site and change the settings from there. It is a little more work, but you can still get to the same destination no matter which way you go.

So there you have it, two of the most popular ways of setting up your domain name to work with your Web hosting account. Next week we will cover a few more domain name tips and tricks I might have left out in the past three weeks. Remember to check out WebHostingShow.com to catch the other domain name specials!

Make sure you tune in next Monday for a brand new edition of the Web Hosting Show. This podcast has been supported by the fine folks over at Web Hosting Chat, your number one place for Web hosting discussions. Remember, if you want anymore Web hosting interviews, videos or podcast go check out WebHostingShow.com.