how exactly do domain names work? is it possible for just anyone to register one without going through a service like godaddy.com?
You have to go through a registrar such as godaddy.
EDIT: As to how they work check wikipedia 
Try 1and1, I love them. Only complaint I heard was about cust. service, and they worked fine for me.
you can just register a domain without buying a service but thats kinda silly
the domains are registered and them pointed to a specific IP address somewhere in the world (domain is just a shortened ip, or is a hyper link of sorts)
You can just purchase a domain name and point it at your computer and then with proper software (such as apache server (free)) people from the web can access the documents shared in your website folder though the domain name
Domain Names a quite expensive, depending on which company you want to go with.
There are ones like the one I’ve got which are free (.co.nr), but you have to display they’re logo on your sites homepage.
Good luck
Cuby
You rent them. 1and1.com gives you 2 free as long as you have their service. They’re usually 5 bucks a month. Or several thousand to buy.
Domain names aren’t expensive. I have a .net domain for 7 dollar/year. Additional website costs is in the order of a few dollars a year for the traffic I get. I have my website at www.nearlyfreespeech.net. I think their policy is in accordance with a lot of people here. I suggest you take a look at it.
What’re you talking about? Mine was $10. That’s like, an hours worth of work.
a domain usually costs about "TYPO"10-20 buks per year “TYPO” depending on where you order… some domains are more expensive then others because they may not be available to lookup on whois databases… useful for those who want to keep the original servers ip private
10-20 per month is a “hosting plan” its not a domain name.
the msot expensive domain i have ever seen is $38 a year, and is my countries .nz domains. but hosting yes you are right a good host is $10 a month on average (or $100 a year if you pay by the year)
Alltaken
10 dollars a month for hosting? My webhost (mentioned above) charges no monthly fees, only for traffic and storage. And that is so little (1 dollar per GB traffic and 1 GB per GB*month I believe), that for me, costs are practically zero. Even a slashdot on my site cost me only 2 dollars or so, and the hosting company doesn’t charge extra for such increases in traffic.
AllTaken, so how much would it be for a .co.nz domain here as i might add taht to my list of expenses (if i can still afford it) for my website
Halfgaar No offense but $1/gb is a ripoff just so u know
most serviced for $10 a month offer about a TB (1000 gigabytes) of bandwidth and like 40 gigs of space…
And how often do you use a TB of traffic? For me, this is far and far cheaper. I pay for what I use, which amounts to a few dollars a year. Granted, my website is small, but if it were bigger, I still wouldn’t get that much more costs.
Storage costs are $0.01 per megabyte-month BTW. More than I initially thought.
Actually my host is $10 a month for 40Gb traffic, and 2Gb space… not all hosts are made equal BTW. Check out host reviews to see which ones are going to leave you high and dry and which ones aren’t.
Alltaken
No, all domain names are available to look up on the whois database. You also can’t hide the IP; you could of course have some sort of proxy /gateway but all that will do is simply double the bandwidth fees, increase load times and doesn’t stop you from DOS attacks or anything since it bounces i back to the original server.
I believe you are mixing the whois database up with “domain name ID protection” which you are basically paying for an “agent” to have their detail shown on the whois instead, and legally they have to supply your details on request anyway, like PO boxes really, you can find out who actually owns them.
The “pro” (professional) domains cost £hundreds see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.pro
It’s only a good host based on what you get for that $10 a month. The price tag doesnt declare quality…
If you suffered a “slashdot” (i.e. server is so boged down with traffic it cant handle the load and thus crashes and /or most requests get time’d out) with it only taking up two GB of bandwidth then the servers you are placed on suck.
2GB traffic is hardly slashdotting quality. Hell, If that was the case god only knows how any website can offer video /large download in a cost effective manner.
You can get cheap hosting that is relativly relativly good all round for a small sum. And it’ll probabily work out cheaper /better.
Actually, $1 per GB is pretty cheap for premium bandwidth ( though, I suspect his hosting /bandwidth services are hardly premium).
Infact, To think you’re getting 40GB of space and 1TB of bandwidth a month for $10 is naive, Try hosting some large files for people /fill that 40GB up and try use that 1000TB bandwidth a month, I’ll happily put a bet of £20mill that your host will either ask /force you to upgrade or kick you off.
It’s hard to have a dedicated server at around $1000 with an 80GB hd and 1TB+ bandwidth for shared hosting to offer near same ammounts for less >.>. It’s called over selling, using big numbers to attract unsuspecting foes knowing on average they use 50mb of space and 50mb of bandwidth.
If you suffered a “slashdot” (i.e. server is so boged down with traffic it cant handle the load and thus crashes and /or most requests get time’d out) with it only taking up two GB of bandwidth then the servers you are placed on suck.
2GB traffic is hardly slashdotting quality. Hell, If that was the case god only knows how any website can offer video /large download in a cost effective manner.
You can get cheap hosting that is relativly relativly good all round for a small sum. And it’ll probabily work out cheaper /better.
Who said anything about the server not being able to handle it? An article I wrote was posted on slashdot, people visited it, server never complained. And because my article was only a few kilobytes, the traffic it produced wasn’t too high…
Servers at Nearlyfreespeech are slashdotted all the time (meaning, visited by slashdot users, not DOS’ed) and they can handle it perfectly.
It was based on the way you said it and that perticular site /phrase in question: “Even a slashdot on my site cost me only 2 dollars or so”.
wikipedia:
The Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. The name stems from the huge influx of web traffic that results from the technology news site Slashdot linking to underpowered websites. However, it has been used to describe the same effect when generated by other websites or metablogs such as Fark and Digg.
Servers at Nearlyfreespeech are slashdotted all the time (meaning, visited by slashdot users, not DOS’ed) and they can handle it perfectly.
Since I’ve only seen the term “slashdotted” used for “issues” araised from the traffic increase I wouldnt use that phrase. “featured on slashdot” maybe, since that doesnt give the false illusion that you had lots of traffic. and i mean lots (like 200GB muffin eaters)