What is the best way to get to own a domain name?

You can go to GoDaddy.com and register your domain name.

@Marina Goddaddy.com will get you there, too. :)

I use Dreamhost.

Dreamhost is good, I also have a few with Hover.com. Use coupon “labrats” to get 25% off.

I use Namecheap.com and love it. It’s a bit more expensive ($9.95/year, woop de doo), but I think it’s worth it.

It’s not hard. I have a dozen or so. I got a few from MadDog and some from GoDaddy. Just pick out your name and purchase it with as many extensions as you want.

For webhosting, I use LunarPages.

My thanks to all responders. I was also wondering if there is a way of finding out if a domain name exists, without submitting it to some site and having to trust that the site is being truthful and not just ripping off a good name?

I don’t know if this will help, but here is information on whois.

Well, @lloydbird, here’s one way.

This won’t tell you if the name has been purchased without webhosting, but you can certainly eliminate any that you get hits on.

Domai.nr is a decent tool to see if domains are available and for it to make suggestions for alternatives if the one you want is taken.

You can also just use the whois service. Typing in the domain directly is a very unreliable way of doing it, you’d definitely want to use whois or the site above, they look up the registration records directly and won’t “lie” about it.