How To — Start A WordPress Blog — Buy A Domain Name

The first step in building an online business is registering a domain name. It’s like incorporating a company when you want to set up a business. The only problem is, it takes a lot of thinking and patience to find a perfect domain name that reflects your personality or business, or both.

A domain name is your identity on the web. So try to find a name that’s unique, memorable, short, readable, and brandable (preferably a .com). You will also have to make sure that it doesn’t conflict with other brand names or trademarks.

Recommended Read: How To Choose A Domain Name For Your Blog

Even though you usually get a free domain name when you sign up for a 12-month web hosting plan, I would recommend purchasing a domain name on your own from a domain registrar like Namecheap.com or GoDaddy.com and it costs $10-$15 per year.

Doing so will make it easy to manage all your domain names from a single dashboard (assuming that you will need more domain names in the future).

Web Hosting Companies offer a domain name free of cost only for the first year, after which they start charging a premium rate. There’s every chance that you might not stick with the same web hosting company in the future, so it’s always better to purchase your domain names elsewhere and manage them separately.

So let’s get started!

Note: I’m starting a real WordPress blog here (for demo purpose).

1. Namecheap Homepage

Go to Namecheap homepage.

Want to register a new domain name at GoDaddy? Check out!

Screencast: How To Buy A Domain Name From GoDaddy.com (Step by Step) | YouTube

2. Choose Your Domain Name

Enter your desired domain name in the search box and click the search button to check its availability.

3. Check The Availability Of Your Domain Name

Click the “Add to Cart” button to add any (or all) of the available domain names to your Namecheap shopping cart.

4. View Cart

Click the “View Cart” button to customize the domain registration term, or to purchase optional add-on services, or to apply a Promo Code.

5. Enable/Disable Domain Privacy Protection

When you buy a domain name (no matter where), your address, email, phone number, company name, domain registration date, and hosting details will be publicly available on the web so that ANYONE can fetch those details by using a simple WhoIs Lookup.

With WhoisGuard (or Domain Privacy Protection), your personal details will be masked and will be replaced with the contact information of the domain registrar (Namecheap in this case) and it helps to prevent telemarketing/email spam.

Click “Confirm Order”.

6. Log In to Your Namecheap Account/Create A Namecheap Account

Login to your Namecheap account or create one if you are new to Namecheap.

7. Place Your Order

Review your domain name, registration term, payment details, and of course the final price and click “Pay Now”.

8. Purchase Summary

You will see the order confirmation and will receive an Order Summary email with details of your order. Meanwhile, you can click the “Manage” button to enter your Namecheap Dashboard and manage your newly registered domain name(s).

9. Namecheap Dashboard

Again, click the “Manage” button (next to the respective domain name) to update its contact details or nameservers, or to buy additional add-on services like privacy protection, email, etc.

10. The Rideshare Guy Consulting Preview

And that’s the default page when you buy a new domain name at Namecheap.com.