[MUSIC]

Websites are driven by great content, but it's also important to pick out

a good domain name so that people can remember how to find your site.

A domain name is the web address you type in

when you want to visit a website, like facebook.com or google.com.

Every domain has to be unique and the domain you want

might not be available because it's already been purchased by someone else.

So you may have to get creative.

Let's break down each part of a web

address and then we'll learn how to purchase one.

I'm going to use the address example.com.

The first part http:// is what's called the protocol.

In this case we're using the HTTP protocol or the

hyper text transfer protocol because we're using the internet to look

at web pages.

If you're new to making web pages

you probably haven't seen too many other protocols.

Because in applications, such as multiplayer games

or streaming video chat, the protocol is

often hidden and it's a detail that most consumers don't ever have to worry about.

The next part of this domain, www, is called a subdomain.

In the early days of the web, it was popular

to add the subdomain, www or world wide web, but this actually isn't necessary.

Sometimes you may see other sub domains on websites which is one way of partitioning

separate major areas of your web presence

but that won't be necessary for this project.

The next part is the actually domain name this

should give people a very short expectation of what

they might find on your site.

Finally, domains end with what's called a top level domain or TLD.

In this case, the TLD is .com, but you're probably familiar with other TLDs like

.net, .org, and so on, .com is the most popular, but sometimes for

personal websites, people will use other TLDs like .me or .name.

For our purposes

there are no technical differences between these so while .com is

the most desirable any other tld will work fine as well.

Now, with the explanation out of the way let's purchase a domain to

purchase a domain you'll need to point your browser to a domain registrar.

The most popular registrar that most people have heard

of, is GoDaddy.com, but there are many other registrars

out there.

All of them will allow you to purchase domains, and maybe even purchase hosting.

So just go with the one that you feel most comfortable with.

I'm going to use one called namecheap.com.

I like this registrar because it's simple and it's easy to use.

First, you'll want to type in the name of a domain that you like.

I'm going to try my name first, nickpettit.com.

And you may want to go ahead and register your name.

So, I'm going to click search, And, as you can see, it is already taken.

It says, make an offer.

Now, I'm actually the person that owns this domain, but I wanted you

to see what it looks like if a domain has already been purchased.

If this is the case, you'll need to pick another domain name.

Most registrars

will give you the option to purchase a domain on back order.

Or make an offer.

But this is almost never a good idea, unless you're really desperate.

Because it's unlikely the current owner will give up their domain anytime soon.

Now I'm going to use the example domain, treehousewebsite.com.

And I'll click search,

and as you can see, it's available. I can purchase it for $10.69 per year.

So let's click through the process to purchase it.

I'll click, Add to cart, and then I'll click View cart.

And you can see that there's a couple of options here.

The first one is the domain registration treehousedomain.com

which, of course, we want to go ahead and keep that.

There's also this free WhoisGuard, that's basically Whois privacy.

Now Whois, is a public database that allows anyone

to look up information about a particular domain's owner.

We don't really need that in this case so

I'm going to remove it but if you would like

to purchase that you can go ahead and do so.

I have auto renew off but I actually wanna turn auto renew on.

That will make the domain renew automatically on an annual basis.

So I don't have to be reminded to pay this

annual fee it will just be taken from my credit card.

So, I can click confirm order and at this point

namecheap.com will ask you to either create an account or if you

have already created an account, you can go ahead and log in.

I have an account already, it's teamtreehouse.

I'll put in my password and then I'll go ahead and sign in.

Now at this point I'm ready to checkout so I'll just click the checkout button.

And here's my purchase summary.

I now own treehousewebsite.com and I can do whatever I'd like with it.

We're now the owners of our brand new domain name.

Next, we need to purchase a web host, upload our

files and then connect our domain to the web host.

That way when people type in our domain, they'll find our website.

If what I just said doesn't make any sense,

don't worry we'll walk through it step by step.