What is a domain and how are they owned?
The domain is the address of a web site, that you see and type into the address bar of your browser. Domains are owned reading from the right of the address to the left. So if we look at the address of this forum:
http://forum.myfreeforum.org
We can break down the address as follows. First we remove "http://", the "http://" part is not part of the address, but indicates what the browser will try and do with what it reads from that address. So we are left with:
forum.myfreeforum.org
Reading right to left the first part of the address is:
.org
.org is a so called top level domain, no one owns this as such, but the powers that be on the interent allow registration companies to sell sub-domains of some top level domains, some other top level domains. Some other top level domains are:
| .com | Companies, once was indicative of US based companies, but the net has democratised a little since then! |
| .co.uk | Companies in the United Kingdom, except that both .com and .co.uk domains are bought and used by individuals as much as they are by companies! So the naming convention has lost all meaning. |
| .gov | Government. Not generally for sale! |
| .tv | Once the assigned domain for some little Country, but now sold at a premium to companies wanting an association with Television. |
As the above briefly demonsrates, the domain name system is a mess! But that is not our problem!
Moving leftwards along the domain name we have:
myfreeforum.org
This is owned my myffs company MarsJupiter LTD. This means that we also own anything to the left of the domain. So automatically the domain:
forum.myfreeforum.org
Belongs to us, us does any forum name people might want to use on our system.
Owning your own Domain
Companies like yahoo.com, dotster.com, even one of our sites m4webdesign.co.uk are lining up to sell you a domain, they can be bought for as little as a few dollars a year.
Given the prices are so low, many people buy up thousands of domains, "cybersquatting" them, leaving them with just advertising content, in the belief that they can earn some money from the advertising, and also extort money from anyone who has a genuine need for the domain name. This is all rather nasty and the subject of many court cases, but in the meantime is does mean that getting a decent sounding domain name is quite hard, as so many have already been taken.
So let us say you have been to a domain selling site, gone through the process of finding a domain to buy, and are now ready to buy it.
Hosting your Domain
There is no point in having a domain, unless it exists somewhere as more than a name and can put something on it people will see. This is known as domain hosting. When you buy a domain, you will certainly be offered hosting to go with it.
This is where many registration companies make a lot of money, they offer you a very cheap domain name, but not so cheap hosting, and they make life very difficult for you if you want to use someone elses hosting with the domain, they will also make it hard for you to transfer the domain to another registration company.
Because of this we do not recommend many companies as registrars. We know yahoo and dotster and ourselves and can recommend them as decent.
When you buy the domain from us, some of the settings will have been done for you, so not only are things easier, you are helping to support your forum.
Controlling your Domain
Now you have your domain, we assume that you have rejected hosting options and want to point your domain to a forum/webpsace that you already have with myff.
We must set things so when someone types your domain address into their web browser they come to myff.
There are two ways of doing this,
Option1 - Set the domain name servers
In your registrars control panel change the nameservers to:
ns1.everydns.net
ns2.everydns.net
ns3.everydns.net
ns4.everydns.net
We cannot tell you exactly how to do this as domain control panels are not all the same.
Now you need to go to everydns.net and set up a free account. Within that free account you need to set up a domain, mydomain.com, and add the records in option 2, to that domain.
Option 2 - Set the DNS records
This step is either done in your registrars control panel if that is possible, or if you have followed option 1, it is done on your domain in your account at everydns,net.
You will need to set the following records.
| name | type | address |
| www.mydomain.com | A | 1.2.3.4 |
| mydomain.com | A | 1.2.3.4 |
We will tell you the actual address to use in place of 1.2.3.4
Option 3 - There is no option 3
If you can't set nameservers or DNS records, then as we said before, don't buy domains that are too cheap! Reputable companies allow you to control your domain properly!
The waiting game
These changes can still take up to 48 hours to be seen across the internet. So be patient. Sooner or later you will start to see your domain resolving to our servers. At this point you will not see your forum, but will see our missing/suspended forum page.
The final step
At this point you need to ask us to change this setting to your domain. When you have done this people will have problems logging on to the forum via your old forum link. This is because your forum sets cookies acording to where your forum believes it is.
