Domain Names

[confusedpixie]

I am starting a new blog for a laugh with DP and am wondering about getting a domain name for it as it has a more interesting name than my own blog.

Where can I get a domain name and what should I be looking for from the companies that offer them? It's a blogger blog so I know google has it's own domain service and it says it offers calendars and emails and practically everything google offers for free anyway for $10 a year. Can you get domains for cheaper from reputable companies?

I have a Blogger blog and I recently bought a domain name through Blogger. It was actually quite a lot cheaper than those I found elsewhere, I paid $10 (£7.65 I think it worked out as) for a .com domain for the year. I just thought it would be easier, and it was very easy. I'm not planning on using any of the extra bits that it comes with.

Hope that's helpful!
Jennifer

I got my domain name from 123 Reg. I don't really know what I was thinking as they are not as cheap as Domain Express who I have used a few times before for work related purposes. I have found their customer service to be really good. Helpful, fast and efficient. I paid less than £10 for my domain, but I host it elsewhere. As far as what you will get for what cost it really depends on exactly what you need for you and your blog. Not sure if that covered exactly what you were asking, but hope it helped anyway.

I manage upwards of 30 domain names so for me, a decent control panel + account management is slightly higher priority than cost. For that reason, I use namecheap.com.

That said, namecheap are generally cheapest around and if you google "namecheap coupon code may 2012" or whatever, they have different offers each month so you can often get a discount too.

One word of advice: never buy hosting and domain names from the same company. Not really applicable with Google (unlikely to go bust any time soon), but have seen so many bedroom hosting companies go under and bloggers/clients lose their domain name because they can't get in to renew or update details.