for keeping track of my digital experiments

In this edition of howto’s by Jason, I will be covering how to buy, setup, and manage your domain. For this tutorial I will be using zoneedit.com which is a free DNS (Domain Name System) hosting provider. DNS is the internet’s way of matching a name to an IP Address. For example you wouldn’t want to remember Google’s plethora of server IP Addresses. You don’t necessarily have to use zoneedit.com, but I have found that they provide a few more key features that I enjoy the benefits of, and have lower latency than XName or FreeDNS.

Before buying a domain, I suggest that you have all your web content ready to go, your DNS hosting up, and your hosting situation ready, so that you don’t waste any of your money with empty domain pages. To “have” your own domain name, you will first have to find out if it is available to be “bought” from a domain registrar. So go to your domain registrar of choice. Much like going bargain hunting on EBay or at a flea market, I suggest shopping around for the registrar with the lowest prices for the type of TLD (top level domain, ex: .com, .net, .org, .biz, .ws) or ccTLD (country code top level domain, ex: .de – Germany, .cn – China, .hk – Hong Kong, .mx – Mexico, .us – U.S.A.) you want to purchase the rights to. I have found that name.com and dynadot have the best prices over longer term periods, they also allow you to pay by PayPal. GoDaddy sometimes has one year term contracts that are pretty sheik. Let me know if you find any great deals. ;-]

Once you have purchased your domain you need to set-up your DNS server addresses.

As you can see from the two screen shots, I use both Zoneedit.com and secondary name servers provided by the Roller Network. A secondary DNS server allows for traffic load-balancing, and also backup if the primary DNS servers were to fail. Secondary DNS servers query the primary DNS servers on set intervals for updated DNS data. Keep reading to find out how to get your DNS server addresses to put in and how to manage your DNS zone (your domain).

I will be showing you how to set-up your own free DNS server account on zoneedit.com, so if you aren’t already there head over to www.zoneedit.com in your browser. You will first need to sign up for an account, so hit the “secure sign up” link at the bottom of the page. Fill in all your contact information completely. Yes, they do make good on their word about no spam. So go through the typical confirmation shiznat that gets sent to your email address. Once your account is all set up, hit the “secure login” link that is right beside the “secure sign up” link you clicked earlier. Type in your account username and password. In case your are not presented with a page link the below, hit the Add Zone link on the left menu column.

Punch in the domain name you purchased earlier where it says “Enter Domain Name”, ignore all the crap below the button that says “Add Zone”. Press the “Add Zone” button once you have finished typing in your domain name.

You should then get something that looks like the following, stating that you can’t edit that domain yet.

If you recall we were talking about the DNS server address that should be entered into the domain registrar’s DNS management table. The two DNS server host names that Zoneedit just pumped out are what you plug in to the domain registrar’s DNS entries for your domain.

Once you add in the DNS server addresses to your domain registrar where you bought your domain from, it might take awhile for Zoneedit to recognize the update. In the meantime, it is time to add in the IP Address of your content server (the server you have already set up your domain on. So click on the edit zone link, and then after that there should be a link that says “IP addresses (A)” at the top of the page, click on it. Then enter in the ip address of your content server. Like I have done below.

Click the “Add New IP Address” button. Which should lead you to the following screen.

Click the upper “Yes” button to set this IP Address to handle requests from both yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com. After the required processing takes place you will find that a new page comes up with both yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com filled in with the IP Address that you entered.

If all is set up properly you should start being able to access the content that resides on your web server. If you want to continue on and add in email capabilities for your domain click on the “Mail Servers (MX)” link to add in email servers. In some cases it is the same IP Address as your web server. Google offers free email and web hosting through Google Apps (below). It provides a completely web based administration, for those of you who don’t want to get down and dirty with Linux/Unix console administration.