About Katie Bischoff Expertise I have been making webpages for 5 years. I have worked with everything from Geocities to Dencity to CuteHTML. I can answer almost any question you have, be it about programming in general or different programs to use.
Experience I have been making websites for 5+ years, and I currently run 10 different sites. I went from having a site on Geocities to having my own domain, and in the process I've used quite a few different programs to ccomplish what I wanted.
Question Katie,
I frequently receive e-mails offering domain names priced from $8.95 and up per year (latest one was from ZDnet). Must admit, it is intriguing to have a website for my family with "ourownname.com" instead of some other long drawn out thing. My question is: if I were to register a domain name, exactly how do I go about having it hosted. For instance, I have a free website now that I have had for over a year. Can my new domain name be directed to my existing website and is it possible to use "bill@ourownname.com" for an e-mail address? Hope I explained this so it is understandable. I have worked with computers for years, but this end of the process leaves me in the dark.
Thanks for your time.
Sincerely,
Bill
Answer Once you register the domain name, you need to get a host. There is a company called FreeServers (http://www.freeservers.com/) that will allow you to host your domain name for free. You have two options. If your site is small (under 20MB), you can host your site from freeservers.com. If you just want the domain name to forward to your current site, create an HTML page called index.html, with this code:
<html>
<head>
<title>TITLE OF YOUR PAGE</title>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="5;URL=URL OF YOUR PAGE">
</head>
<body></body></html>
and replace TITLE OF YOUR PAGE with the title of the page and URL OF YOUR PAGE with the address of your current site. CONTENT="5; means that after 5 seconds, anyone that goes to your domain name will be forwarded to your current site. You can change the number to make it longer or shorter.
Once you've made index.html, just upload this page to freeservers.com, and anyone that goes to your domain name will be forwarded to your current site.
I hope I made sense! If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. :)
