I have my web page up and running with my local ISP. I want to now purchse a domain name (my ISP only uses their long URL names) to simplify contacting my page. Thanks to 'ShutMeUporDown', I felt GoDaddy would be a reasonable price. But, what do I do with this name? Can I possibly link this name now to my existing page with my ISP or do I have to open up a whole new host service within GoDaddy if possible. Thanks for feedback and sorry for my ignorance. Gordon

Your isp may offer service to use a domain name, you need to ask them. If yes, you can provide them with your info, I think it is called dns. If they say no you need to move your page to another server. I am pretty sure they will say yes though. You could set up a forward page on another service but then you would be paying for two services....

I will check with them. Also, I found this link and the way I understand it is I buy a Domain name through them and they forward the hits (redirecting) to my current home ISP web page and I can mask my home page name if desired. Is this right the way I am understanding it? http://registrar.godaddy.com/forwarding.asp Also, say when going into GoDaddy, it sometimes takes a bit to load versus other pages. Would this be the case if someone were to be trying to get their Domain name I have set up before a re-direct (if they do indeed re-direct)? Thanks

GoDaddy is like the broker, they buy the name for you at a small profit then provide you with the statistics....but you own it outright. The name does not exist in another local for you to link from, you have to provide the local. If you isp does do domain names, which most do, it will totally replace your current addy. GoDaddy is probably slow because they get so much traffic on their servers or have slow servers or lines to net. A hint you may not want them to host your page, or it could just be traffic. Anyway, you buy a domain name, receive the statistics, then use a hosting company that can use those statistics to address to your page...on their server. Hopefully your isp can handle hosting a domain name. I suggest you join some newsgroups or yahoo groups on web developement for further your knowledge also. Hope I could help. :)

Godaddy offers redirection service. You can use this just like you said. Your www.yourname.com will point to the isp webspace you have your site at. Masking.. i dont know if you want to use this or not. Especially if you plan on having multiple pages. Masking will make every page have the www.yourname.com address. When people attempt to bookmark specific pages they get the home page instead. You should only use this if your going to have just a single page. As Das said.. the godaddy site is slow because its big and because of lots of traffic. Your site is currently on your isps server. It will probably be pretty fast until you get a lot of big pages or tons of traffic. By then you will be moving to dedicated servers at a real host so it wont be a problem. The newsgroups are a good idea.. you can also find lots of webmaster forums to ask questions at. In a year you will be answering other peoples questions about this stuff. Its confusing at first but as you probably already know it gets easier with practice. Already having a site up at your isps space is half the battle. Good Luck.

Thank you for the feedback..Gordon