karenswebworks.com

It’s not hard to register a domain name, but the process does intimidate people.  To help reduce the intimidation factor, here’s a step-by-step guide to how to register your domain name at GoDaddy.com.  There are other reputable domain name registrars, like networksolutions.com, namecheap.com, and register.com. I like GoDaddy for several reasons: I’ve found them to be very reliable and their technical support is excellent, among others.

I recommend that you keep this page open while you work on the registration and click on the banner below to open GoDaddy.com in a new tab.  In the interests of full disclosure: I’m an affiliate of GoDaddy.com and I get a commission from them when you register your domain name using the banner link.  If you keep this page open, you can switch back and forth to check the directions against what you see as you’re registering

Note: I try to keep this information as up to date as I can, but businesses change and update their sites all the time. If you find something completely different when you try to register your domain, please email me to let me know about it.

1. When you click the banner above, it should bring up a page that looks something like this:

2. In the box just below “New .COMs..” type in the domain name you want. If’ it’s a .com, don’t type in that part. If it’s not a .com, click the down arrow next to .com and change it to what you want it to be.

3. Click the Green “Go” button and you’ll get a screen that looks like this (assuming you’ve previously checked to be sure the name you want is available).

4. Click on that orange bar that says “Continue to Registration.” You’ll likely get a popup window asking you to consider buying some more domains. Feel free to consider it if you want (it can’t hurt anything, but it doesn’t help much either).

5. Click the orange “No Thanks” bar and it should take you to a screen that looks like this:

6. If you happen to already have a GoDaddy.com account you can log in here. If you don’t, fill out the information on the right hand side, being sure you complete all the required fields that are marked with orange stars. This information is important for your registration. The email address needs to be a valid one that will get to you because GoDaddy is going to send important information to you via this address. Once you’ve done that, click the orange “Next” button. You should go to a screen that looks like this:

7. Check how many years it shows in the box and adjust it to whatever you want it to be and check that the registration information showing is accurate, then click “Next”. You can safely ignore the rest of the stuff on the page. You should see this:

8. You can safely ignore this. Click “next” and scroll down to this:

9. Keep scrolling down until you get to the hosting option.

10. If you don’t have hosting anywhere else and you want a hosted site, then click in the button for “Web Hosting Economy.” You don’t need the other things here. Click “Next.”  (You don’t have to make this decision now.  You can always come back later and sign up for hosting if you choose to.)

11. Check the page to be sure it looks like what you ordered. One more thing you might want to consider is the “Private Registration”. You can order it by clicking in the little circle next the red “Private”. If your only address option is your home address, I would recommend opting for the Private Registration. Click “Continue to Checkout”

12. A couple of things to note on the checkout page:

1. Your page will look a bit different with more spaces for the credit card info and it will ask you to set up a user name and password. I have an account at GoDaddy.com already and it has my cc info on file. You’ll have to enter yours. Be sure to note down your user name and password and keep these in a safe place. You WILL need them later.

2. I circled the “https:” in the domain bar to illustrate what you should look for any time you put credit card info into a web page.

3. Note the Paypal button that lets you pay with Paypal if you choose.

4. Be sure to check the box on the right that says “I have read and agree to the terms…”

Then cilck on “Place Order Now.” You should see something like this:

You should get a couple of emails from GoDaddy.com. First, you’ll get an order confirmation almost right away, and then you’ll get an invoice that shows your order has been processed and you’re now the proud registrant of the domain name you chose.

Next lesson: What to do with your domain name now that you have it.