Creating a "dot com"

My last posting mentioned that I had updated my friend Octave DeSmet's tiny Bales "R" Us website. About a week later I received an email from the free webhost (byethost.com) informing me that the partner site that provided the co.cc domain names had gone out of business. Suddenly all websites with names ending in co.cc vanished from the internet, including balesrus.co.cc!

I have had to change my own URL 6 or 7 times over the years as free webhosts went broke or discontinued the free service. But my website is a hobby (OK, a passion, if you really insist!). For Octave it is part of his bread and butter. This forced me to look at the possibility of registering a domain name, something I had never done before.

What would it cost? How hard was it to set up? I didn't know.

Now I know. It cost Octave $13 to register the domain name balesrus.com for one year. It cost nothing to park this domain on Byethost.com, and it took only a few minutes time once the registration went through its process. I just parked http://balesrus.com on Octave's existing free account, by using the V-panel page that is part of his account. So long as he pays the annual fee, his website will always be found at this address, regardless what webhost he is using. For a business this kind of stability is paramount ... and not expensive.

Good luck balesrus.com !!!