Here are the major steps:

Register your domain

• First, pick the top level domain (or TLD) that you want (e.g., .com, .org, .net).
  • For .com, .org, .net find an accredited registrar at the ICANN List of Accredited and Accreditation-Qualified Registrars - ICANN = Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
  • For the two-letter country codes, contact their respective registrar at IANA Country Code Database - IANA = Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
  • Uwhois - Looks up two letter country domains
  • New TLDs are being discussed all the time. Different registrars will be the final authorities for different TLDs that emerge, like .biz etc.

• Second, find an accredited registrar. Many registrars are available at many different prices. The actual registration process, no matter whether it costs you $35/yr [the most common figure], $70/yr or $7.50/yr, registers you in exactly the same database, and pretty much provides the same service.
  • Here is an inexpensive registrar called: Cheap-DomainRegistration.Com, which is at the bottom end of the market in cost. At the time I posted this, they provided free parking, free forwarding and free transfer of ownership -- each of these can be costly at a premium domain registrar's site. (This is not meant as an endorsement, but to encourage you to look around with your eyes open.)
  • My registrar: BulkRegister (also not an endorsement). My service has been as good as when I was with two more famou$ companies.
  • Another registrar: Cheap-DomainRegistration.Com, for instance, offers domain names for $8.75, transfers for $7.75 and offers free parking, free URL forwarding, free domain name generator software, and more (also not an endorsement).
  • People who are inexperienced or naive will buy from the most expensive companies. Just a warning: these companies will offer overpriced services to accompany their overpriced registrations.
  • "Never give a sucker an even break" - W.C. Fields

• To find a domain, use the whois database. Here is a portal:
  IP Address Lookup (enter domain   www. ).
  This is actually a portal to the Internic WHOIS database. This can be used to lookup domains (specifically: .aero, .arpa, .biz, .com, .coop, .edu, .info, .int, .museum, .net, or .org) and check for availability

• To apply for a domain, you will need to provide:
  • owner name - who owns it - Note: this cannot be changed except by notarized (snailmail) transfer of ownership
  • administrative contact - who administrates it
  • technical (or zone) contact - who operates the computer and DNS (Domain Name Server)
  • billing contact - who pays the bills
  • DNS server name - who will serve the domain record
  • DNS IP address - where will the domain record be physically located

• If you don't have an administrative contact, technical contact and billing contact, you can just enter your own name. It takes just a few minutes at your registrar to change the data later (except for ownership! see above). The DNS server is one that serves only the name of your domain. Usually, your domain is on another server.

• Here is a sample database entry for wormhole2k.org:

  SR Consultants Norman, OK 73071 US Domain Name: WORMHOLE2K.ORG Administrative Contact: Scott Russell srussell@ou.edu SR Consultants Norman, OK 73019 US Phone- 405-555-1212 (fake of course) Fax- 405-555-1212 (fake of course) Technical Contact: Scott Russell srussell@ou.edu SR Consultants Norman, OK 73019 US Phone- 405-555-1212 (fake of course) Fax- 405-555-1212 (fake of course) Record updated on 2001-03-28 13:59:01. Record created on 2000-04-22. Record expires on 2002-04-22. Database last updated on 2001-08-06 05:23:33 EST. Domain servers in listed order: WWW.BOTLINX.ORG 129.15.38.204 NS.BOTLINX.ORG 129.15.38.203

Domain Name Service (DNS)

• Domain Name Service is the method of obtaining the physical location of a server, which is given as an IP address (currently a four-number set). The numbers are each within a range of from 0 to 255. (Note: not all IP addresses are assigned, for example malfunctioning DHCP servers may return IP addresses beginning with 169, and firewalls often begin with 172, neither of which normally appear in Internet IP addresses.)

• The domain name is decoded from BACK to FRONT.

• An example, www.wormhole2k.org
  • The first step is determining the top-level domain, or TLD. This is located to the right of the last period. If the TLD is .org (like this site), your computer looks up the TLD in root-servers.net. The location is ftp://FTP.RS.INTERNIC.NET/domain/. The file named.ca contains codes for all the root servers. Here is a sample:

    . 3600000 IN NS A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. cache expiration (in seconds) and the name of the name server A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 3600000 A 198.41.0.4 cache expiration (in seconds) and the IP address

  • The TLD server then reports on the name, and in a separate listing the IP address for the domain name server.
    • In this case, the .org domain server is asked for the name and location of the wormhole2k domain server.

    • The entry in the .org server for wormhole2k returns two DNS servers:

      WWW.BOTLINX.ORG 129.15.38.204 NS.BOTLINX.ORG 129.15.38.203

    • The first DNS server is asked for the wormhole2k domain record to locate the server. If a certain amount of time passes, the second server will be asked.

    • If you are looking for a domain that is valid, but its domain name server is not operating (or the server itself is not operating), this is called a "lame server". You may have to wait several minutes before it gives up.

    • The domain name service protocol depends on "authoritative" response and if there is no response, it is not authoritative, so it waits. Eventually, you see a message similar to this:
      

    • If you ask for a server that is not in the record or the domain is not registered, the response is almost immediate, like if I ask for "fake.wormhole2k.org", which does not exist:
      

    • In the case of www.wormhole2k.org, the name of the server is "www". (Actually, it could be called any valid character string.)

    • This request maps to a DNS configuration file that lists all of the domains. There is typically a master and one or more slaves. The primary (master) server has the following entry:

      zone "wormhole2k.org" { type master; this is the master copy file "named.wormhole2k.org.forward"; this is file name of SOA record };

    • Secondary (slave) servers have the following entry:

      zone "wormhole2k.org" { type slave; this is the slave copy file "named.wormhole2k.org.forward"; this is file name of SOA record masters { 129.15.38.204; }; IP address of SOA master copy };

    • This is the actual wormhole2k domain record:

      $TTL 86400 TTL=Time To Live or how long to cache this data in seconds wormhole2k.org. IN SOA www.botlinx.org. root.www.botlinx.org. ( SOA = Start Of Authority Note: any mistake in syntax negates this whole record 2001021901 ; SERIAL serial number yyyymmdd## 7200 ; REFRESH cache refresh at 2 hours 3600 ; RETRY cache retry at 1 hour 604800 ; EXPIRE caches data at most for 1 week 86400 ) ; MINIMUM caches data a minimum of 1 day wormhole2k.org. IN NS ns.botlinx.org. name of primary name server wormhole2k.org. IN NS www.botlinx.org. name of secondary name server www.wormhole2k.org. IN A 129.15.38.204 IP address of www server www.wormhole2k.org. IN MX 0 www.botlinx.org. mail delivery priority & routing wormhole2k.org. IN MX 0 www.botlinx.org. mail delivery priority & routing www.wormhole2k.org. IN WKS 129.15.38.204 TCP SMTP location of well-known services

    • Since domain name service depends on "authoritative" responses, any mistake in this configuration will invalidate the entry and the record will not be loaded. Common reasons include syntax errors, logical errors in routing emails (MX), and any disagreements with the ROOT SERVERS. Illegal characters (or loading in BINARY instead of ASCII TEXT mode) will also invalidate an entry and render the domain inaccessible.

    • Because data is cached (stored without refresh) for one day, any change in the domain name server will take one day before the cached data expires from all machines. The worst scenario is someone retrieving the DNS information one second before the data is changed. They will have a full day of outdated information, whereas someone who accessed it one second afterwards would have the new data right away. The same is true of DNS registration information kept by the registrar as well.

  • You can get DNS service for free at a number of places. Two of the largest are ZoneEdit and Granite Canyon Public DNS. (To look for more, just look up the keywords "free DNS" on a major search engine.

Configuring the HTTP Server

• The current IP address of the www.wormhole2k.org server is 129.15.38.203 according to the domain name service, so your browser accesses the computer at 129.15.38.203 in its search for www.wormhole2k.org.

• Web servers (also called httpd servers) may serve one or more domains. In the case of one domain, the server gives you files that are underneath its root document directory (DocumentRoot in the configuration file). (Note: this is the same machine that is also known as ns.botlinx.org, which was the secondary DNS computer mentioned above, so there needs to be a way to discriminate requests.)

• When multiple domains are present on a given server, these are called virtual domains. These may point to different root document directories and each launches a different virtual server. Here is the configuration entry for www.wormhole2k.org:

  <VirtualHost 129.15.38.203> ServerAdmin scott@botlinx.org DocumentRoot /home/httpd/html/wormhole ServerName www.wormhole2000.org ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/wormhole/error_log CustomLog /var/log/httpd/wormhole/access_log combined </VirtualHost>

• If you would like to see how my web server is set up, you may want to access the following test script. It tells you what my server is like and what your computer is like in return.

• You will want to make sure that your domain works, so you will need to do an "NSLOOKUP" like this, and look up your host. Enter the full name of host (e.g., www.wormhole2k.org), and it will return the IP address:

• NS Lookup (enter host name or IP address)

• If you did not configure your DNS correctly you will get an error message. For instance "fake.wormhole2k.org" does not exist and if you enter it above you will see *** ns.idt.net can't find fake.wormhole2k.org: Non-existent host/domain

• "NSLOOKUP" will take an IP address and return the fully qualified server name. This name is the one that is authoritative with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is the ultimate authoritative source. Each number on the Internet is registered with them or ceded to local authority (e.g. 127.0.0.1 is the internal IP address of any computer).

• If you misconfigure your name server, you will have old data cached on the Internet somewhere and it may interfere with configuration requests. In that case you may want to try an NSLOOKUP program on another network.

• Unless you have authority, nothing that you put on your name server will matter.

Making the Site