What's the best way to buy a web address and have a simple site hosted?
 

Title says it all. I need a very simple, very low bandwidth web site. The address I want is available. I see a lot of free hosting, but seems the companies will place ads on the site, which I don't want.

godaddy.com for domain registration and hosting,simple and cheap

I'll host you for dirt cheap, including a mail address (or two), DNS service, etc. You just have to buy the name. For name buying, I use dyndns.com since I used their free service for a long time before I needed a "real" domain.

Here ya go. Free domain name if you pre-pay a year. EXCELLENT 24/7 tech support.

http://www.hostmysite.com/hosting/linux

+1

I'll bet you can't beat id10t's offer...

I was doing some reading on this topic. Some suggest that it's best to buy the name through the company doing the hosting. Is this true?

It should not matter. Usually the only advantage is $$'s, cheaper if you do it with the same company. godaddy is running some offers, use code gdh1019 if you go with godaddy.

Lee - to be honest, no. It does matter that you get your name from a honest registrar, so you actually own it. There are a few out there who have scammed and they own the domain, and let you use it, as long as you host with them. Change hosts, no more domain.

Also, be aware that *all* legit domain activities pretty much take place by email - not postal. Wife got scammed for $50 last December 'cause one of the scammer sent something in the mail relating "to your domain gruv.org and indexing". They were supposedly a search optimization site, but of course they never did anything beyond cash the check...

When you buy the domain, you'll need to define a primary name server and maybe a secondary that will be the authority for your domain, and in turn those 2 machines (or one machine with 2 ips) must have a DNS service listening that will respond with answers for your domain, any sub domains ( pelicanparts.com is wayne's domain, www.pelicanparts.com is a subdomain, as is forums.pelicanparts.com ), and optional things like where email to user@domain should really be sent (mx records or mail exchangers).

I wrote and article about this a few years ago.

http://networkoracle.com/website.htm

Not all the time. If they set it up for you they can list themselves as one of the contacts making it a bit more difficult to move somewhere else. They can't actually keep it from you but they can create red tape.

Scott

I host on my servers at home
I host with a company in TN (IX Hosting) very cheap and great
I host in Kuala Lampour Malaysia, for offshore "legally questionable material" in a very secure datacenter.

Depending what kind of internet connection you have at home, turn that old computer collecting dust into an internet server (takes about an hour) and you can host 100's of "normal sites" on existing stuff.

I use "network solutions" for many of my domains, as their DNS is more configureable. So, even though I could run my own DNS servers (requires 2 static IP's), I choose to use them.

Checkout IX hosting, they are dirt cheap, and I have been very impressed with them. I have one account with 3 domains, and manage another account for some clients.