[wplug] domain question

[Patrick Wagstrom]

Zach Uram wrote:
> I wanted to get my own domain but I've never done it before. I guess I
> go find a domain registrar and pay around $20 and the domain is mine
> for a year. So once I have the domain how do I set it up so that if
> someone goes to www.mydomain.org it will automatically redirect them
> to http://my-public-ip and I want the URL bar to only show
> "www.mydomain.org" and never the IP of my webserver. Will I have to
> run my own DNS servers? Never did that either. Also what if my machine
> goes down (I run low end SDSL, power outage or whatever reason), how
> can I set up the domain so that if my IP is down it will automatically
> send them somewhere else such as http://my-backup-ip but still show
> "www.mydomain.org" ? Running Ubuntu. Later I would like to add mail
> services but for now I'm just worried about setting up a domain for a
> web presence.

Zach,

$20/yr seems a little high actually -- most registrars charge about $8/yr. 
  Lots of people seem to use GoDaddy.com, however in the past WPLUG has had 
some discussions about the ethics of using GoDaddy.  You'll find that folks 
in WPLUG use lots of of different registrars.  I use NearlyFreeSpeech.net 
as my registrar, it's like $8/yr with another $3.65/year to keep the domain 
information private.  I've previously used GoDaddy, which was good, but the 
number of ads just made me feel dirty.  Before that I used gandi.net, a 
simply AWESOME provider, but the poor performance of the dollar to the Euro 
has made them very expensive.

As far as DNS goes, for most of my domains I use the free services provided 
by NearlyFreeSpeech.  Decent tools, but not the greatest support for 
dynamic DNS.  For my main domain, Wagstrom.net, a domain that is shared 
with my brothers, I use dyndns.org.  We have our routers configured to 
automatically update their DNS entries (this is a feature of many different 
routers, such as WRT54Gs and most D-Link).  DynDNS also provides a failover 
service for domains that go offline.  Pretty slick actually, unfortunately, 
they get kinda pricey now (I signed up for unlimited support back in 2002 
when it was $30/lifetime).  However, I have to say their service is really 
top notch.

With regards to running other services, I cannot recommend using Google 
apps enough.  I used to run my own mail server, but be prepared to 
constantly battle spam and support issues.  If you've got a non-reliable 
server, running mail on it probably isn't the best idea.  Running Google 
apps gives you killer spam filtering, excellent service, SMTP, IMAP, and a 
good web interface.  Really top notch, and free for smaller domains. 
Google apps also provides a calendar, google talk for your domain, etc. 
Yeah, you don't get the experience of setting everything up, but do you 
really want that experience?  All of the startups that I've got good 
knowledge of use Google Apps to.  I'm not so sure that those are skills you 
really would want to build anyway.

Anyway, that's my experience.  NearlyFreeSpeech, DynDNS, and Google Apps 
have been awesome for me.

--Patrick