1) First you need to seriously study how to research and choose a domain name to register considering all the relevant factors and your marketing and promotion plan.

2) The next step is to talk to a good web designer or webmaster and consider and figure you will need some help off and on, even if you choose to use a website template and keep it almost unchanged. Most web site templates need some customization. The web designer can help you verify or choose a better web site domain registration company (domain registrar).

3) Avoid using a hosting company as a domain registrar (who is usually a reseller, not a primary registrar) and who suggests using their "web site generator". Avoid website generators or WYSIWYG, "what you see is what you get" site editors. Unusual or "artistic" design-from-scratch sites seldom do as well as tested and proven designs with fairly standard navigation. Remember you are building a web business, NOT your personal artistic creation.

4) After you read the "Choosing a domain name", you will be ready to research names using a domain registration company's domain name search function. Once you choose a web site domain name (or two), you will have researched what names are available using the domain registrar's domain name search tool. Those are good ways to test the registrar.

5) The registrar should be a fairly strong independent domain registration company in business over a year, with medium rates, not super cheap, but low-medium to medium pricing. Avoid registering with a reseller, like a hosting company who just subcontracts that out or does "private label". Big hosting companies try to do that sometimes so they can get new site owners early. We prefer the specialist type registrar, but we would avoid Network Solutions, the oldest large firm in the business. They are expensive and at least to us they have seemed unresponsive or slow to respond, like a big corporation, seeming to take business and customers for granted.

6) Once you have done a preliminary screening as above and asked your web designer who might be good, then shop around the domain name registration rating sites which rank or screen the better or top hosting and domain registration companies. Based on all that, and your own testing and comfort with the domain registrar's web site, choose your favorite registrar. Be sure your web developer or designer is comfortable with that registrar.

7) It might be a good idea to choose two registrars if you are going to register four or more web site names, so you can have a quick alternate if you decide to move, you will also have seen the domain name transfer tools. But normally, all the web sites will be at one registrar so you can keep track of all of them more easily.

8) Once you have selected a name and registered it and talked to a web designer and done some basics of planning your site and marketing and promotion plan-strategy, you should be doing the same kind of process above to choose a hosting company. You should be careful and read "how to choose a hosting company" before you actually consult web hosting ratings and hosting screening and ranking sites.

The experience of your web designer should be weighted at least as high as the hosting ratings sites. We believe the bests ratings of hosting companies are by the people who work with them every day, webmasters and website designers. Take a look at the "Website Designers' Choice Top Hosting Companies". The list is not long.

Avoid hosting your site at some fly by nite or a friend's or acquaintance. The security issues and volume and support issues demand a major hosting company with serious technical support and direct fiber "backbone" access.

9) Once you sign up for a hosted site, you receive all the directions by secure email, telling you how to point your domain to your website. First of course, you have to install a homepage (index.html). Be sure to study proper web site design tips and web business success tips first, to get your first home page almost what you hope to have later as far as basic content and keywords. That will help your site propagate. But don't expect any or much traffic if you do not do proper traffic promotion of your website. Proper website promotion is a science which must be combined with excellent business and web strategies.

Good Luck