Domain Registration

Perhaps this is the most exciting part of setting up your online business. You need to choose a name for your project. In fact, this is not an easy task at all and a very responsible one. The thing is that all domain names on the internet are unique, and you will need to choose and register only an available domain. In addition, you will need to secure ownership rights to the domain and register it in your name. This is the next important key to your business that you must control, because while servers for your store can be changed like gloves, a domain name is your unique identity by which everyone will recognize you.

Domain name registration can be done on the websites of various registrar companies. There are quite a lot of them, and you can choose the one you like and that is located directly in your country. However, we advise you to choose a special company. 

The fact is that modern online businesses are often subjected to cyberattacks both from automated data scrapers and from your potential competitors. Therefore, so that your server does not work in vain serving чужих algorithms, you should take care of its protection right away. And since your domain name is the door through which everyone comes to you, it makes sense to place a guard next to it.

This guard, and at the same time the domain name registrar, will be Cloudflare.


Step 1

Open the company's website:  https://www.cloudflare.com and go to the "Login" section, where you will need to register for the first time.

We recommend doing this using your Google account; to do so, select the corresponding button at the top.

Then click the "Continue" button to confirm the data transfer.


Step 2

After successful registration, you will be taken to your personal Cloudflare service area, where you need to click the "+Add" button and select the "Register a domain" section.

And then begins the most creative moment, namely choosing a domain name. Simply enter your company name and select the domain name that is available and that you like.

The list will show domain names, their cost (usually per year), and a "Confirm" button; click it when you finish your selection.

On the next page, you will be asked to choose the registration period for this domain name.

Below that, there will be a form to fill in the registration information about the domain owner. Please fill in this information very carefully! This may be extremely important in the future when you need to confirm your ownership rights to this domain. Also, do not worry that this information will be public: as a rule, the Cloudflare service hides this information as private.

Next, choose a payment method and enter your credit card number. There is also a convenient option here, "Enable automatic renewals": by activating it, you will enable automatic renewal of the domain when the paid period expires.


Step 3

After registering the domain, you need to go to the "Domains/Overview" section, where you should click on the domain in the list. You will be taken to the domain management page.

Here we will need to link your newly registered domain to your new server, which you should have already purchased in the previous step: server purchase. To do this, you will need to add a special record to DNS. Select the "DNS" section and the "Records" subsection in the left menu. There will be a "DNS management" block here.

Click the "+ Add record" button and fill in the fields: 

and click the "Save" button.


Congratulations! You have successfully registered a domain name and linked it to your server. As we said, there is nothing particularly complicated here, but at the same time you fully control all the important information that is registered in your name. 

Well, we have completed all the preparatory steps for setting up an online business, and now it is logical to move on to the next stage: installing the Melbis Shop software.