Domain Registrars

What is a domain registrar?

Most web hosts will offer you the option to register a domain name through them, such as mysite.com. The web host itself, though, has to register the domain with a domain name registrar.

A domain name registrar is simply a company officially accredited by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) or similar organizations to register and manage domain names. End-users are not allowed to directly register domain names with ICANN.

Web host vs. domain registrar

Registering your domain name through your web host might seem all fine and dandy (I registered my first one this way, too) but it has several disadvantages. First of all it will most probably cost more than registering directly with a domain registrar because the web host wants to make a profit on selling domain names.

Also most of the time you have no direct access to your domain name account. For every little change to your domain name you have to open a support ticket with your web host. Depending on the terms of service this could also mean that you can't sell your domain name because it essentially isn't yours but your web host's.

Thus, I recommend that you keep your web hosting and domain names separated and register them yourself with an official domain name registrar. It will allow for greater flexibility and be cheaper, too!

DNS records

Having your domain names with a domain registrar usually allows you to directly manage a domain's DNS records and use the registrar's DNS servers. DNS records are responsible for mapping a domain name to a server IP among other things. The most important ones are:

• A record: A records (address records) are made up of a host name and an IP address and essentially point a domain name to a web server (e.g. host: mysite.com, IP: 1.234.56.789).
• CNAME record: CNAME records (canonical name records) are aliases pointing to a host name and are mostly used for setting up sub domains (e.g. alias: members, host: mysite.com).
• MX record: MX records (mail exchange records) consist of a host name and a domain name (the one after the @ in the email address) and tell the email sender which host (mail server) is in charge of handling emails (e.g. host: mail.mysite.com, domain name: mysite.com).

Whenever you make a DNS change it can take up to 24 hours for the information to propagate through the internet. This simply means that other DNS servers on the internet don't immediately catch up because they keep DNS information cached for a certain amount of time before updating.