Lord of my domain

Do you remember when Leo Blair was born? Diana George certainly does, because within minutes of the baby's name being made public in May 2000, she snapped up the Web domains leoblair.com and leoblair.co.uk, spending £31 in the process, in the expectation that she was on to something big – that someone would want to bid hundreds, thousands of pounds maybe, to buy them.

Now, a quick check (at http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois, though you could use any "whois" server; just ask Google) shows that today, the two domains are still there – albeit owned by two different people, judging by the different (blank) sites they point to. One would guess those thousands of pounds never materialised, which makes Ms George's just another dot.com tale.

Except that you could use her technique, applied to yourself, to save quite a lot of money for a small outlay. One of the things that tends to put people off changing their internet service provider is the prospect of having to tell everyone that their e-mail address has changed, and the worry that once they do change they'll miss all the e-mail that was going to the old address, since the person will have no way to find the new address. It's much like banks, which rely on the inconvenience that ensues when you change, rather than the fantastic service they offer, to keep people there. Yet, just as with changing banks, changing ISPs can save you a lot of money.

The solution: get your own domain name. You don't have to be a dot.com or co.uk; you can be a .info or .name. They're all available, and prices are close to rock bottom (though with domains, as in all things, paying a bit more is worthwhile).

Your first step is to find someone offering "domain registration". Type those two words into Google and the right-hand side of the screen offers links to companies selling their services. It's sensible to go with a British one, since calling them up if you have a problem or query will be much cheaper. (And, unlike ISPs, their support lines are charged at cheap national rates on 0845 numbers, rather than the extortionate £1 per minute.)

The question now tends to be: which is better, .co.uk or .com? Actually, there's more to choose from (and they often sound more elegant). There's .org, or .org.uk, officially for non-profit organisations (which could apply to quite a lot of people). There's .net, for internet or network companies. There's .info, which is meant to be for domains about "information on any subject". Well, registering a .info domain in your own name would certainly be informative about you.

Lastly, there's .name, which – as it implies – is for individuals to register their own names. However, there's a twist with the latter: you're meant to register as firstname.lastname.name (so mine would be charles.arthur.name). Confusingly, you can also register as lastname.firstname .name. E-mails would be sent to firstname @lastname.name – or lastname@firstname.name. For someone like me, that could get messy – and I don't think I'd want Arthur Charles's e-mail (assuming he's out there) if he had registered at a different company. So my advice is to avoid .name.

Once you've registered your domain, which can cost as little as £2 per year, you'll also gain facilities such as e-mail forwarding. That's the gem that allows you to change ISPs with impunity. Mail forwarding means you can set up an e-mail address such as me@mynewdomain.info (if you registered mynewdomain.info). Tell all your friends to e-mail there for evermore. It should be the last broadcast message you'll have to send. After that, you can set up your e-mail program so that the "From:" setting is me@mynewdomain.info, rather than the one you had with your ISP.

At the company that hosts your domain, you'll get a Web-accessible page that lets you decide where your e-mail should go. You set it up to redirect all e-mail that arrives for me@... to go to your present ISP's e-mail. It's that simple. You can even set it to divert to a Hotmail or other Web account while you're abroad. Quite a few will let you read the e-mails via that configuration Web page; always helpful.

When the time comes, as it surely will, to change ISP – perhaps that move to broadband, or a better offer from a cable company in your region – all you have to do is find out from your new provider what your e-mail is going to be, and set up the mail forwarding to go to that account. It can be sensible to forward the mail to both the new and old accounts simultaneously for a while, just in case you have problems.

Such domains also offer the chance to get unlimited mail forwarding, so anything sent to any address at your domain will come to your ISP's e-mail. That means that when you're at a Web page (say, Amazon's) and are asked to give a contact e-mail, you can offer amazon@mynewdomain.info and find out whether they ever sell your e-mail on. (They don't, but it's always worth testing.) Suddenly you're in control of your ISP, and of all the people who want to capture your e-mail address. And all it cost was a few pounds and a few minutes.

The bad old days of domain-hosting companies, who would view e-mail forwarding as a chargeable add-on, or charge you to move your domain away from them, are past. But those are two tiny points to make sure of before you press the "Accept" button. Other than that, it's the best way to get in control of the Net I've yet found. If you've had problems, then do get in touch.

network@independent.co.uk