Ask Mr. Lee

How to get your own domain name.

Today someone asked me how I launched my weblog. Well, as you can tell from the right side, I am using Google's Blogger service, but you access these pages through askmrlee.com

How do you do this? Well, you first need to buy yourself a domain name. I have used MyDomain.com and GoDaddy.com to buy the domain itself because I think they offer good prices and pretty good service. MyDomain.com offers free URL and email forwarding.

Think of URL forwarding as nothing more than call forwarding, but applied to the internet. You direct all hits to askmrlee.com to be redirected to askmrlee.blogspot.com which is the real address of the page you're looking at right now.

Now apply this concept to email. Instead of being chained to an address such as youarestuckwithusforeverhahaha@sbcglobal.net, you just setup email forwarding to the real email address. The real advantage is that you now have a permanent email address and if you leave your ISP, you won't have to give up your email address and go through the hassle of letting everyone know your new address. Getting too much junkmail on one address? Change it and use another one without closing your email account. Now this method is not spam proof and you cannot completely hide the real email address in messages. However, this is a simple way to unchain yourself from any ISP and give yourself a domain name that YOU control. Plus it is simple enough for most people to apply to their existing email accounts.

How much does this cost? The cost of the domain itself is $8 - $9/year through either MyDomain.com and GoDaddy.com. MyDomain's email and URL forwarding which are free.

Next time, more details on using email forwarding.

posted by askmrlee @ 3:31 PM