Technically, this is not a WordPress topic but I believe that all WordPress blogs or sites should have their own domain names. A domain name signifies that you are serious about your business and it hardly costs anything. I’ll cover the basics of registering a domain. Before reading this post, I recommend reading the post on how to brainstorm for a great WordPress domain name.

I use GoDaddy for my domain name registrations so I’ll use them as an example but the process of registering should be more or less the same with all registrars.

1. Go to GoDaddy - www.godaddy.com
2. Enter the chosen domain name and click the “Go” button (I recommend searching for a .com domain name as it is the most memorable extension).
   Note: The GoDaddy interface may change in the future but the process will remain more or less the same.
   
   
3. It will display whether the name is available or not (highlighted in green). Assuming the name is available, DO NOT click on any of the other domain options provided by GoDaddy (highlighted in red).
   
   
4. Click the “Proceed to Checkout” button and GoDaddy will again try to tempt you with offers like additional domains (highlighted in red). Do not succumb to the temptation. Instead click on the tiny “No thanks. Continue to checkout…” link (highlighted in green).
   
   
5. Login if you already have a GoDaddy account or create a new account by registering. Then click the “Continue” button.
   
   
6. After you register or login, GoDaddy (the evil money making machine that it is) will tempt you one last time. Ignore all additional options that it provides like private registrations, hosting, emails etc and check the “No thanks. I’m ready to checkout.” option and click the “Continue” button (highlighted in green).
   
   
7. One final money saving tip before you check out, search for GoDaddy coupons on Google and enter the coupon code in the “Apply Code” section. Notice how the price of US$ 20.28 gets reduced to US$15.38 (highlighted in green) when I used the code OYH3. Now go have a coffee with the money saved (before you go for that caffeine fix, there’s one final step).
   
   
   
   
8. Select a “Payment Method” (Credit card or PayPal) and click the “Checkout” button. You will get an email after the transaction successfully goes through. That’s all. It was easy wasn’t it? And I hope you didn’t succumb to GoDaddy’s temptations.

In my next post, I’ll show you how to buy hosting from BlueHost.