Where to begin? NEED HELP!

[numchuck]

I'm really in the dark here and am new to domain hosting. You might find these questions stupid but I'm new to this. Ok heres my problem.....
I recently purchased a domain name off of register.com. NOW I am lost. How do I start building my website? Reading up on it, it seems you connect through another hosting service where you build the actual site. I have built many sites before but I can't figure out how to connect it to the domain. I don't want to pay for a hosting service AND the domain, but are there any free hosts that can still transer to the domain. Or do you have to pay for hosts if you want to transfer.

As you can see I am completely lost. If someone could walk me through it would be MUCH appreciated.

[Canuckkev]

Well, one option you have is MyDomain.com. It will allow you to redirect the domain to a free hosting account. Why not check out http://www.mydomain.com to see what they offer, and if you have any questions, ask away!

[ducktape]

zoneedit.com is better

[numchuck]

Just to get it straight. MyDomain redirects the domain to your free hosting site. So I have to connect the domain to the MyDomain and then send it over to my free hosting site. I'm still not sure how to do all of this DNS stuff though.

[numchuck]

As I read up on MyDomain it just redirects and shows the free hosts web address. I was wondering how you connect your host directly to your domain. This is where I'm mainly confused. After purchasing the domain, do all of my sites pages connect to the domain or does it just redirect to your free host. Ex. if your domain was happyboots.com, do your pages connect with the domain for all pages like happyboots.com/store happyboots.com/boots. Sorry if I'm making this confusing, but I'm in over my head.

[Chicken]

At register.com you'll need this info: http://mydomain.com/move/

Mydomain offers some decent help for what you are asking:
http://mydomain.com/services/mydomain/webforwarding

If you have any questions beyond what I posted (and what is covered on mydomain's site), feel free to ask.

[numchuck]

Still quite confused on this. Since I bought a domain off register.com, I only own the one name such as domain.com, and I can't make subpages such as domain.com/info.html? Do all I have is a short URL as a redirection page?

[alien]

If you are using www.mydomain.com to redirect your domain, you need to set your nameserver at register.com to mydomain nameserver.

Then at mydomain.com, you can redirect your web to some free web host, yet still keeping www.yourdomainname.com.

After that you can just upload your html stuffs to the free web host and you will get a working website. Do remember to set your main page as index.html or index.htm or main.htm ....

The subpage you refering to like "www.yourdomainname.com/info.html" is the html you created, you can create many html pages and it will as "www.yourdomainname.com/*.html"

[Canuckkev]

I'll try to explain this clear, as I know it is complicated, and I don't fully understand nameservers and such.

First, this is what MyDomain.com will let you do.

When a user goes to your site, you can set it to "Cloak" or "Stealth" redirect, so when a user browses to: "http://yourdomain.com", they will see in the browser address "http://yourdomain.com", instead of "http://blah.freewebsites.com/~public/user/index.html". But, essentially they are just in a Frameset. So, when a user clicks on a link on your site like "Home", they will still see "http://youdomain.com" in the browser, not "http://yourdomain.com/home.html". BUT, this can be enabled too...There is an option in the MyDomain.com settings for your domain to "Pass Subdirectories". This means if you like to "http://yourdomain.com/home.html", they will see in their address bar "http://yourdomain.com/home.html". BUT, still, if on your page hosted by the free site you have a link to just "home.html", it will not break out of the frameset, and the user will still see "http://yourdomain.com". Now...I hope I didn't confuse you. This way will benefit, but the only way for it to act completely like a domain is to get your domain hosted on a free site. There are a few that do this, such as http://www.netfirms.com .

[Chicken]

Originally posted by numchuck
Still quite confused on this. Since I bought a domain off register.com, I only own the one name such as domain.com, and I can't make subpages such as domain.com/info.html? Do all I have is a short URL as a redirection page?
Just to specifically answer these questions. You bought the domain at register.com. All you have is the domain.

domain.com

If you'd like anything beyond a domain name that doesn't resolve, then you need to sign up for hosting, either paid:

You sign up for hosting. Host tells you their nameservers. You got to register.com and enter those nameservers. Host sets up DNS and site on server.

...or free:

You sign for hosting anywhere and get some whacky URL like http://freehost.com/~blah or http://freehost.com/kjg/blah and you then take care of signing up for DNS services (like mydomain.com), where you point your domain to the space you signed up for. In this case, you would use your DNS service's nameservers (mydomain.com's for example), and point the domain to the space via mydomain.com's control login.

[Jan]

Oh numchuck, how well I can imagine how you feel :) I had a domain name 4 months before I knew what the hell to do with it. And the registrar wouldn't answer emails :confused2

I asked a friend who had a domain name and he was rambling on about name servers etc me still in the dark :mad:

Finally after all that time I found out that I actually needed a host for the domain to work!

I got a paid host and voila, there were the name servers that that friend had tried to tell me about. I changed the info with the registrar and I uploaded my site and then I had myowndomain.com up and running!

PM me if you need extra info :classic2:

(been there done that)