Question about my domain name

[fedude]

I bought an account with Hostgator and took out a domain name through them ($15). When I do a whois, I see that Hostgator owns the domain name instead of me.

I've read elsewhere that most people take out a domain name separate from the hosting company, to maintain their ownership of the name.

Can someone explain how to do this? I want to purchase another site from Hostgator, but I want to do it right. I notice that one of the restrictions appears to be that I cannot "transfer" a domain name to Hostgator DNS's for 60 days.

Just confused.....

[dewt]

The 60 day restriction is on moving the registration of the domain.

You can use any of the great many companies out there to register your domain for you. Once you have registered your domain you simply edit the nameservers for the domain to point to the ones given to you by HG in your welcome email.

When choosing a company to buy your new domain from check that they allow you to carry out basic functions such as edit the DNS and lock the domain.

[striddy]

Originally Posted by fedude

I bought an account with Hostgator and took out a domain name through them ($15). When I do a whois, I see that Hostgator owns the domain name instead of me.

Email support at hostgator dot com with what you wrote here to get it changed. They don't own the domain, you do. However showing your name publicly on the web isn't something that most people want to do.

[fedude]

Thanks Dave,

At the very least it appears to save you 50% each year on renewing the domain name. ($10 vs. $15)

Do most developers do it this way?

[GatorNathon]

People choose to handle their domain registrations in different ways. You can register your domain at any registrar that you want and simply change the name servers to us. You also have the option of registering it with us so that if anything happens we have direct access to correct it instead of referring you to your registrar.

By default our domains do show hostgator information but we can change that at your request. We do not own the domain when you register it through us, our information just shows up.