Domain Name - your web address
You
should have a domain name, such as www.noiselikeacarrot.org.nz.
Mine is www.antonz.co.nz
Names do not have to imply commerce ( the .co. bit). A non-profit orchestra for instance might prefer to be say www.flutechoir.org.nz. The .org. means organization.
Registering a name should cost you about $25 per year.Advantage of the '.nz' bit
If you register in New Zealand (it's not as cheap as an international name), then searches for you can specify NZ. In Google, that's the 'pages from New Zealand' option. This is important if you have a common product on a world wide basis (say, saffron) and you want people to select local companies. You can be New Zealand based but if you are not .nz then you are not local according to Google.
Registering a name yourself.
People will register your domain name for $40 to $65. You will be paying someone to fill in a form, and they will have had to get the info off you anyway. It is best you fill in the form yourself and cut out the needless extra person. Do it online, and expect to pay about $25. Look at Domains4Less and compare a few others with it. (Type "cheap domain name registration" into Google, specifying pages from NZ if you are registering an NZ name.
It's a yearly cost
Registration is on a yearly basis. First time up, register for one year. You may find that the chosen name has problems and you want to change it. Once it has settled into use and a number of people know it, you can register for longer periods. You get emails as the re-registration time nears.
A web address means you can swap hosts easily.
Your web address is actually something like 72.167.232.224 and it is just a way of specifying a set of folders on a web computer. A name like www.antonz.co.nz is just an alias for that. If you change hosts, the number changes, and the databases are updated. Your address stays constant.
'Free' domain names - short term use only
There is no such thing as a free name. You can however, piggy back onto someone else's name in what is called a sub-domain. Say, someone has a big site called www.mawhaiwhai.net.nz, and this is set up for sub-domains. Then you (a group called kutu) can have a sub-domain such as www.kutu.mawhaiwhai.net.nz or maybe www.mawhaiwhai.net.nz/kutu/. This is what happens if your telephone company or someone similar offers a you free web site. This is fine for a short time, but long term you need your own web address.
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