Registering a domain at one registrar: a worked example

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The offer this page was built around is over. The promotional code no longer works, and the first year is no longer free. The screenshots are kept because the awkward step — finding the MX record in a registrar's control panel — looks much the same everywhere.

Every registrar's panel is laid out differently, and the DNS section is usually two menus deep under a name nobody would guess. Below is one panel walked through end to end. Yours will not match pixel for pixel; the shape of the task will.

1. Create the account

Registration wants a name, an address and an email. Use an address only you can read — the mailbox you give the registrar is the one that resets the password later, so it is the key to the domain itself.

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Not an address from this site. Addresses here have no password: anyone who knows one can open it. That is the point of them, and it is exactly why they do not belong on an account that owns a domain — whoever guesses the address can ask the registrar for a password reset and read the answer. Keep a throwaway address for the sign-up forms you never come back to, and a real one for the things you own.

Registrar sign-up page

Filling in the registration form

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Registrars are required by ICANN to hold contact details and to verify the address. If the confirmation is ignored, the domain can be suspended weeks later — which then looks like a mysterious outage. Confirm it when it arrives.

Confirming the email address

2. Find a name that is actually free

Search, and expect most short names to be taken. A longer, duller name has two advantages: it is available, and it attracts no attention from the sign-up forms you will use it with.

Searching for an available domain

An available domain in the results

The checkout step

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Check the renewal price, not the first-year price. A cheap first year followed by an expensive second is the standard shape of these offers, and the second year is the one you actually live with.

3. The step everyone gets stuck on: DNS

After purchase, open the order and look for something called DNS Management, DNS Zone, Advanced DNS or Name servers — the name varies, the contents do not.

The list of orders in the control panel

Finding DNS management

The DNS record list

Adding the MX record

Add one MX record. The exact values — here, and they are the same regardless of registrar.

4. Wait, then verify rather than guess

DNS changes take anywhere from a few minutes to a day or two to spread. There is no way to hurry it, but there is a way to see where it stands: the domain debugger asks your domain's own name servers, live, and shows their answer.

When it reports the MX record, open the domain here and the mailbox is working. If it still does not, three possible causes and how to tell them apart.

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