So you’ve decided to start your own blog and now you need to register a domain name. There are many different ways to name your site and selecting a domain name can be as simple as personal preference or as complicated as an optimized name for SEO purposes (which we will cover in another post).

Public Or Private Domain Registration?

Whatever your decision concerning what to name your blog the most important thing you need to do in order to get your blog up and running is to register its domain name. While there are plenty of domain registrars out there charging various amounts for a year’s worth of service, my personal favorite is Godaddy. They are one of the few domain registrants to offer private domain services as an optional service to its customers. Do you need private registration for your blog? That’s really up to you but without it all the information you used to set up your domain is freely available to the public if they are so inclined to search for it. To check out the registration details of any website go to Whois and type in the website address. You can check the registration details of New Blog Help if you like and since my blog was privately registered with Godaddy, the information is blocked by Domains By Proxy the service that Godaddy uses. If the website you are looking up doesn’t use private registration you will be able to find the name, address, phone number and private email address of the owner all right there on public display for anyone to access.

Your information could potentially end up in the wrong hands or could provide email spammers with a way to send you hundreds of emails a day. In the end the decision of private or public registration is really up to you and if cost is a concern, the domain name itself alone is less than ten dollars with any registrar and the private registration is another ten dollars for a whole year. So when you break down the costs it’s about 83 cents a month for a whole year of owning your own domain and all your details available to anyone on the Internet or 1.66 a month for a whole year of owning your domain privately.

In this day and age of identity theft I prefer to have my confidential information for my eyes only and not gamble with the possibility that some weirdo out there may be calling my house because he saw my phone number in the domain name registry…but in the end it’s a matter of personal choice and now the choice is up to you…