When I first started looking at creating my own website hosting company, I decided that I wanted a domain name. I started looking for a hosting company. I quickly found out that not only am I going to spend $100 for the domain name registration and maintenance, but many of the companies providing the hosting would charge me even more to file the 'paperwork'. This was on top of their setup fees and the Internic fees. I eventually decided on a company with reasonable setup fees that included filing for me. Sure I would still have to pay NSI (Internic) the $100, but at least I wasn't paying $25 to $100 for someone to fill out the forms. If you're currently considering a webhosting company, and they charge for filing a domain name, I'd ask myself how customer service oriented this company is. But keep it in perspective. One company may charge a lower setup fee and then charge a filing fee since they expect you to want it. My personal view on this is two-fold. One the company isn't being as straightforward as I'd like. It's like the 'ADMU' on a new car sticker. I knew what it was already, but when looking at cars, I asked every salesperson what it was. I won't go into some of the answers I got though it makes for good comedy piece. In the end, I wouldn't deal with any salesperson who wasn't straightforward with me. One who outright lied, I walked out on. When he asked where I was going and why. I told him. I would much rather the salesperson be straightforward with me, than lie to me with answers he thought I'd rather hear. Let me decide what and how much I will pay and for what. By the way, 'ADMU' is 'Additional Dealer Mark Up'.  It's extra margin, and in turn profit over what the manufacturer thinks the dealer should make off a given car. But my other thought on the subject as a consumer is 'great'. Why? Because armed with the information in this article, I can say no to the filing fee, and use the lower setup fees to my advantage. Setup fees by the way are different. Setup includes the setup of the DNS servers themselves, and preparing the site with login names, and passwords, setting up email accounts, etc. This is actually much more work than the filing of the domain name. Personally, I think if a company is going to charge for the filing, then it should be a minimal charge.

Later things grew and it no longer made sense to host sites on someone else's computer. I explored various connectivity options, as well as server hardware and software. I immediately remembered the fees so many charge customers for filing new domain names. Many thoughts went through my head. I'm technically oriented. I don't like paperwork. And other people are charging up to $100 to file these things. This can't be good. So I went and took a look at the form. My first impression was with the email based form available at ftp://rs.internic.net/templates/domain-template.txt .  Not a pretty site! The amount of information is overwhelming. I will tell you that once you've done one filing and understand what they're asking for, it takes all of about 5 minutes to do. Do you really want to pay someone up to $100 for 5 minutes of work. If so contact me, I'll be happy to do it for you at half that rate...:)

NSI has put up a couple of pages to make filling out the form easier. If you go in armed with a little knowledge of what they want, it'll be painless. First, make sure your desired domain name is available. Go to http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois    Fill in the box with the desired name. Hopefully, it will come back with "No match found for whatever.com" This means Internic does not currently have that domain name registered to someone else. Once you find your new domain name go to http://www.networksolutions.com/ (Updated: and register your domain name in 3 steps.)    and select 'Web Version, single page' or 'Web Version, step by step' I prefer the single page. It's just as fast, and I think easier to use. That's the one I'll be discussing, but the information is useful to either method.

The first thing you will be asked for is your email address, the domain name, and if this a new, modify or delete request. Simply do what it says, give them your email address, and domain name. New registration should already be checked. Then click the proceed button. Internic wants your email address because they actually create the text based form for you and email it to you. You then send it back to process it.

The next section that comes up is the Organization. This is the official owner of the domain. If you want it in a company name, put that there. If you want to own it, put your name in. You cannot change this name later without incurring additional expenses.   Also enter the address information about the owner. The country code field expects a 2 character abbreviation such as 'US' for the United States of America. I don't think anyone ever looks at the 'plans for this domain' field, but I always put 'web, ftp, email'. That's never caused a problem for me.

If you scroll down, you'll see contact information. There are 3 contacts: Billing, Technical, and Administrative. The billing and administrative are typically a person at the owner's site. The technical contact is usually at the hosting site. You'll notice that each contact section has a Internic handle field. Internic assigns a 'handle' to each person (or role account) filed. This is like a social security number to the IRS, or driver's license number to the DMV. It's an easy way for them to keep track of you. Internic will tell you to apply for one first, don't. They'll assign it when they process your registration automatically. It'll only slow things up while you wait for the handle to come back. I mentioned that the technical contact is usually a person at the web hosting facility, or for larger hosting companies people (a role type contact) it may be multiple people with a more generic email address like hostmaster@company.com.The webhosting company can provide you with the Internic handle for this person. Just put the handle number into the box provided.

Unless you actually followed NSI's advice and setup your administrative and billing contacts beforehand, you'll need to enter the complete contact information as well. As you look at the contact section, notice that not only can you provide a Internic handle, but another line is a hotlink to a 'provide contact information' section. This section is actually further down on the same page... Change the radio button to the 'provide...' line, and then click on the hotlink in the administrative contact section. Most of the information is straightforward. First, note that they want last name, first name. Also notice that there are radio buttons for individual or role account. Remember role accounts are groups of people doing the same function, such as tech support for a webhosting company. More than likely you'll want to leave individual checked. You should be aware that the information you're providing can be looked up by anyone doing a 'whois' on the domain name, or your Internic handle. This includes your phone and fax numbers, as well as email address. One other point, the email address must be active. So if you're registering a new domain, then the email address can't be at that domain, as it doesn't exist yet. But don't fret, use another for the time being. Don't have one? Go create on real quick at one of the free email services such as hotmail or juno. Then when the domain is active, and your new email account setup, then do a modify (same form just prefilled out with existing info), and change the email address. Confirmation will be sent to the registered email account so don't deactivate it until you're sure the change is complete. I should also point out that only 2 people can actually change a domain's information: the tech contact and the administrative contact, and they use the on-file email addresses to confirm any changes.

The billing contact also has lines to make it the same as the administrative and technical contacts if wanted. Quite often the billing contact will be the same as the administrative. If it's going to be a separate person, just follow the same procedure as for the administrative contact.

Almost home... The last section is the most crucial. Getting this one wrong will result in delays in activation your domain. This section is called 'Name Server Information'. Name servers, or domain name servers, are computers that will translate a hostname to the real IP address. IP addresses are numbers. I won't go into how DNS works but just know that a computer somewhere must know what the real IP address is for each machine serving your domain, such as www, ftp, and mail. The Name Server Information section will tell the root DNS servers, where the machine that really knows is. Unless you are setting up a machine with a dedicated connection (which if you are and you're reading this, find a good consultant to work with you real fast), you won't know where these machines are without asking. More likely you're using a webhosting company. They know this information already. Ask them for it. It comes in pairs of hostname and netaddress. Hostname is a registered name such as ns.w3-sales.com; while netaddress is the real IP address of that machine, in this case 206.27.190.24. These servers much be registered with Internic already. You must have at least a primary and one secondary nameserver. You can have more than that though. When you enter these, be sure to enter them EXACTLY as your provider has given them to you. If Internic's registration complains about these numbers (you won't know until they try to process the request), try to ping the machine by name and make sure the IP address reported back matches. One quick way of verifying nameservers that often works, is do a whois on the webhosting company by using the url http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois/domain_name.com?STRING=domain_name&x=28&y=15 as in http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois/mindspring.com?STRING=mindspring.com&x=28&y=15 At the bottom you should get a list of 'Domain Servers'. On the left hand side is the hostname, and the right the corresponding IP address. Check this against what they gave you. Look for typo's. If they are radically different, ask the webhost. They might not be using the same servers for their own stuff as they will for yours.

When you have it all filled out, it should take you less time than reading this page, click on the 'Submit...' button. The form will be created and mailed to the email address you listed on the first page. When you get it, hit reply. Before you send the reply, check over it for typos and make any corrections. It's not necessary to go back to the website, just change the text in the email message as it's what really gets processed. When it's right hit send. Within a few hours, usually within minutes, you'll get your first reply. This is simply a "we got it" reply. Tell your webhosting company, that the request has been filed. They may only take the nameservers down so often for changes, so advanced notice is helpful. They will need to update the nameservers with your domain's information. Sometime later, which can be anywhere from minutes to days, you'll get either a "can't process" or "completed" reply. If you get a "can't process" reply, look over the reply it will tell you why. Sometimes someone may have had in a request right before yours for the same domain, or more likely, the nameservers are wrong. Make any changes needed to the message they sent you, and resubmit. When you finally get your "completed" message, you should know that it will not be active right away.  Depending on what time of day it is when it's completed, it will go in either that day's or the following day's root DNS update. After that's done, they site should be active, provided that the webhosting company has done their part. You did tell them that it was filed right? That's pretty much all there is to it.  And it's really not that bad. I went into a lot more detail of why than you need to know file one. But now that you know how and why, you can amaze your friends... If you run into problems, or have questions I can be reached at rporter@w3-sales.com

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Robert Porter is president of First National Financial Corp., the parent company for w3-Sales.com a small business oriented full featured webhost. A core belief is that not every company's needs are the same. With that in mind, w3-sales.com was created with flexibility in mind. Robert brings a 14 year career as a professional programmer with a background in database management, and communications across a wide variety of platforms.. Robert is of the old school of computers, where learning not only how but why is important. Just as important is sharing that knowledge with others. Robert can be reached at rporter@w3-sales.com or visit his homepage at http://www.w3-sales.com/rporter/