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"A domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) or by a national country code top-level domain (ccTLD) authority, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries and offer such services to the public."
From Wikipedia
In other words, a domain name registrar is the company you buy a domain name from - or is it?
Buying a Domain Name from your Web Host
Your web hosting company may offer domain name registration services, but most likely, they are actually using a different company for the registration because they aren't actually accredited to register domain names. You can see a list of accredited registrars on the ICANN website. However, your web host probably has an agreement with an accredited registrar. The registrar provides a way for your web hosting company to place their code on the web hosting company's website; so, it appears that you are registering through your web hosting company, but you are actually registering through the accredited registrar.
Some web hosts have contracted with registrars in other countries because it is cheaper to do so. In fact, Yahoo has contracted with a registrar in Australia. To actually contact the registrar to do tasks, such as transferring a domain to another registrar, Yahoo would direct their customer to make an international call for support. This may no longer be the situation, but it illustrates the situation that the services a company lists on their website may not actually be services they have in house.
If your registrar is actually a different company from the company you pay for the registration, you have to log in twice to get to your domain information, or, you may have to log in again for some functions, but not others.
How to Register a Domain Name through a Registrar
If you took a look at all the accredited registrar on the ICANN site, you see that you have quite a few options. Some popular registrars in the US are: Go Daddy, Tucows, Network Solutions, 1&1 Internet AG (a.k.a. Schlund.de), Register.com, Dotster, ...
The first thing to do is find a domain name that is available. Write down some possibilities in order of your preference. Then do a WHOIS search. Do not search for a domain name unless you are ready to purchase because many registrars sell lists of the names that people have searched. The clients who buy that list will go ahead and register the name, hoping to sell it back to the person who did the search - at a much higher price. Registrar sites have a search box right on the home page. However, that search is just a sales tool. The real tool is a WHOIS search. Registrars like to hide the WHOIS search link in the barely visible links at the bottom of the page. They also like to move them around, which makes it difficult to find, but you should be able to find it on the home page. Again, don't do this search unless you have your credit card handy, or you may lose a good domain name!
After you find out that the name is available and are ready to purchase, set up an account with the registrar. Do not let the registrar scare you into buying a bunch of extra services, such as a private domain. They will tell you that scammers, spammers, and serial murderers will use your domain name registration information. If you have a business, your contact information is already available to scammers, spammers and serial murderers. By having a public domain name, you tell the legitimate people that you mean business. The one thing that you should buy, is multiple year registration. That tells people that you really mean to be in business!
Registrar and Registrant
Your domain name registration has three levels of contacts: 1) the registrant, 2) the adminstrative contact, 3) the technical contact. These are people the registrar has permission to speak to about your domain name. While the registrar is the company who registers the domain name, the registrant is the person or entity who owns the actual name. If your web hosting company or your web developer registered your domain name for you, check out who the registrant is. If it's not you, you don't own your domain name.
You may be listed as the domain name registrant and still not be able to make changes to your domain name, if that domain name is locked into someone else's account. That has happened to several of my clients. Someone else, such as a previous web developer, friend or relative, registered their domain name. That person was honest and put the site owner as the registrant, but it was inside the account of the person who did the registration with their own domain names.
Of course, some people lose their business names to unscrupulous people who they thing are registering their domain names for them. One gentleman called me because he had gotten a "free" domain name. He didn't check out the fine print. The company registered a domain name for him, but that "free" registration included a hefty monthly fee for website hosting. The problem was that he already had a website hosted with someone else!
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© 2010, Nora McDougall-Collins