You can get free registration with your newly registered or transferred GoDaddy domain. Qualified TLDs are .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ and .MOBI. The promotion code is cjcBOWL.

You can get a GoDaddy domain name at the discounted price of only $6.99. Use the GoDaddy coupon cjc699COM.

What’s an interesting domain name to register for these days..?

Update: It seems the two are using the same stock graphic. Thanks Eric!

Unless the two websites belong to the same person, I suspect foul play bad design choice here.

I first bumped into Paying Post because it’s been heavily advertised in the (paid) blogger community lately. As you guys know, I am a member of many of these sites, so I signed up for the newest player, though I have yet to take an assignment from Paying Post. (I was waiting to see if Paying Post would turn out to be a scam or the real thing.)

Here’s a screenshot of the Paying Post website.

My first impression was that it looked too much like a blog than a website. Note that this is Paying Post’s recent redesign, so now it looks more like a website.

A few moments ago, I got a tweet from @nourayehia linking to her blog post about Photoshop brushes. In the post, she put up a link to and a screenshot of Photoshop Lady‘s blog. It reminded me a lot of the Paying Post website so I went over and had a look. Here is a screenshot of Photoshop Lady’s blog.

It turns out the graphic of the lady on the laptop on Paying Post’s website is just a part of Photoshop Lady’s header horizontally flipped! Now I wasn’t sure who copied who (if indeed it is a case of plagiarism), but looking from the screenshots, it’s a mite obvious, isn’t it?

I thought, well maybe the creators of the websites were just one person, so I checked their WHOIS info. Paying Post’s is private so I can’t tell, but I did notice that while Paying Post used Go Daddy to register, Photoshop Lady used Media Temple. So I’m thinking they’re probably not the same person.

I also noticed that Paying Post registered their website in late October of 2008…

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)   Domain Name: PAYINGPOST.COM      Created on: 27-Oct-08      Expires on: 27-Oct-10      Last Updated on: 29-Oct-08

while Photoshop Lady had registered her website a lot earlier, in early February 2008.

Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC. Record last updated on 01-Feb-2008. Record expires on 01-Feb-2009. Record created on 01-Feb-2008.

So… did Paying Post rip off Photoshop Lady?

Ever since I verified my Paypal account, I started investing in domain names.

A domain name gives credibility and remeberability (if that’s even a word!) to your site. I used to have this super long URL: RandomDetoxification.blogspot.com. I had it for about three years, but my friends could never remember it. I must have lost many potential followers with that hard-to-remember domain name. Now that my domain’s at RandomDetox.com, I’m sure my first-time visitors will remember it and are able to return whenever they want. I’m also #1 on Google when you search for the keyterm “random detox“.

I have other domains like JunkFoodHeaven.com, BodySoulDetox.com, Free-Games.Me.UK and several others. I haven’t developed any of them fully yet, they’re just sitting on my domain manager waiting for when inspiration hits. Hopefully soon.

The first domain I ever bought was from a local domain reseller. That was for a client of mine. The rates were cheap, they used CPanel and the uptime was average. Unfortuately, the bandwidth proved to be too limited, and the available space too little as well. I’ve upgraded my client, fortunately, but that first year gave me a lot of headache.

The second domain I bought was for myself. Again the rates were cheap, but this host proved to be worse than the first one. My website was down four days in a week. I could hardly access CPanel because the connection was so slow. Plus, the company support system responded after a whole week.

It was only after browsing through web hosting tutorials that I found a cheap place to buy a domain name (GoDaddy go!) and a good place to host a domain (BlueHost consistently outperforms the rest).

As a newbie domain buyer, it never occured to me that there were websites that actually dealt with web hosting rating and web hosting awards so that customers could make an informed choice.

An example of an up and coming website is WebHostingRating.com, a site where oldtimers (or all customers, really) actually rate hosting companies based on customer satisfaction, affordability, reliability, uptime and techical support.

The first page of WebHostingRating.com features the Top 10 web hosting providers of 2008. As expected, Bluehost Inc figures near the top at #2. InMotion Hosting bags the top spot.

However, none of these top ten providers may be the best for you. For example, you might specifically be looking for a good place to host your blog. Then Globat.com may just be your answer, offering unlimited domains and subdomains, a bit of marketing credit and blog-friendly content management systems like WordPress and Joomla for only $7 a month.

On the other hand, if you need hosting for a full-fledged website with services like unlimited emails, parked domains, spam and virus protection, with FTP, PHP, MySQL and more, but have a limited budget then the place to go is InMotion Hosting which offers all these for only $10 a month.

Web Hosting Rating provides all these information, including each company’s detailed plans, and whatever discounts they may be offering, plus real reviews from actual customers.

So the next time you (or I) decide to buy a domain name and a hosting package, don’t just rely on the advice of a friend. Check the advice of many, and make an informed choice.

Had a bit of trouble setting up the domain I impulsively bought last night so I decided to create a tutorial for all of you who might be thinking of setting up a GoDaddy domain with Blogger.

First, log in your GoDaddy account. Then, hover your mouse over the Domains tab and click on My Domains.

That will bring you to the Domains page. Click on your domain name. That will bring you to the page below. Click on Total DNS Control and MX Records.

You should now be inside the Domain Manager. You will be modifying one and adding another CNAME here. Do not delete or alter your A Record (Host). (Some tutorials will tell you to do that, but it will only cause trouble later on.)

Modify the CNAME for the host (alias) named www and point it to ghs.google.com. This means that if a user types in www.yourdomain.com, Google will dynamically point the user to any Google server that’s available and loads your page fastest.

So now your www.yourdomain.com should work fine upon publishing in Google (it won’t yet, you haven’t set up Blogger yet). But what if a user decides to just type yourdomain.com, without the www prefix? It will probably load up the GoDaddy parked website. So you have to add another CNAME with the host as yourdomain.com and point it also to ghs.google.com.

And that is all we have to do on the GoDaddy front. Let’s now move on to your Blogger account. Login to your Blogger account, select your blog, and go to the Settings tab and then click on the Publishing subtab.

Right now you’re publishing on Blogger, but we want to use your new domain name so go ahead and click on Custom Domain.

 

Okay, that will bring you to the page below.

On the same page, click on Switch to Advanced Settings, like in the screenshot below.

On the Advanced Settings page, type your domain name in the box. Don’t forget the www prefix. Then press the Save Settings button.

  

Now your domain which is www.yourdomain.com should be working. However the URL yourdomain.com is probably still parked at GoDaddy. Let’s remedy that, shall we? Check the checkbox that will allow Google to redirect yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com, like in the screenshot. Then Save Settings again.

 

Voila! Now both ways of typing in your URL are working! Yay!

Okay no. It might not work RIGHT away. Or maybe it will. This one: www.yourdomain.com will probably work right away. But this one: yourdomain.com might take a few minutes to an hour or maybe more, not sure. So if it’s not working, give it a couple of hours.

Don’t go tweaking all your other settings in vain. Don’t listen to people telling you to delete your A record, forward this, redirect that… Because I did and it caused me a lot of headache last night! Until I figured out the meaning of patience. Hahaha.

Good luck!