In registering your chosen or preferred domain name, you have to first search out if that name is available. Many web hosting companies also have their domain name registrars. You can always type the proposed domain name into the search box of your domain name registrar and click to find out the availability of that domain. If that name is not available, you can always amend the name to one that is eventually available.

One of the most popular domain name registrars and web hosts is Go Daddy.

Hosting
To host your domain, you must bear in mind that a Linux/apache sever is best suited for blogs than a Win server….

Don’t be baffled by the technical details of disk space and monthly data transfer (band width) or megabytes and gigabytes. In simple layman language, what it meant is that, as an ‘aspiring landlord’, you must first buy a piece of land big enough, to accommodate your dream house.

You must also register the title deed with the authorities saddled with that task. That would be the proof of your ownership, in order to avoid future disputations. Once you are set up on this level, you have become a bonafide member of the virtual estate world. Welcome to the virtual estate world, it is bigger than real estate in many respects.

Because Africans are still ignorant and yet to wake up to the great opportunities on the internet, many local paid hosting providers have and are still ripping-off many bloggers and website owners. Particularly in Nigeria, these quacks sell disk space as small as 10 to 20 megabytes for the price 1,000 megabytes.

This is akin to selling a 10 sq meters piece of land to somebody to build four units of 3-bedroom flats. Apart from the fact that the space is ridiculously small to build any house on it, they have also cheated the buyer by collecting money equivalent to the price of a full plot of land for a tiny portion (less than 10%).

For me, it is almost ridiculous to pay $40 for a new top level domain (TLD) name, in this age of infotech when you can buy it for $10 or less! That is how much our Nigerian ‘resellers’ are selling TLDs for gaullible and desperate victims in our midsts.

If we must succeed as an army of bloggers with a vision to stamp the banner of AFRICA on the global map of the blogosphere, we cannot permit cyber touts and hustlers who pretend to be indigenous web hosting companies to pollute the market; we must sack them out of the market and bring quality service for bloggers from Africa.

These fellas also have the low uptime of their servers which are always down, due to poor infrastructures (lack of uninterrupted electricity and also absence of skilled technical manpower).

No serious problogger desirous of success would surrender to be trapped by these unscrupulous local hosts.