[iMacfan]

Hello,

I'm on the verge of registering my first domain name, but something is worrying me. It looks like you have to have attached to the domain name contact details such as Name and Phone number. Now, this is to be a personal project, and I really don't want to publish my personal number for all to see. Is this necessary? I have seen on the support section of Godaddy.com something about private domain registration, but I really don't want to do that if it is either going to make administration difficult, or look shady, as that really is not the case.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

David.

[Dork.]

Yes, you need an actual contact address (not 100% sure about the number). They need to be able to reach you if someone is doing something naughty from that domain name. And the database is public, and is regularly harvested for spam e-mail and junk snail mails. It's one of the prices to pay for the Internet, I suppose.

My wife uses GoDaddy's private domain registration for her blog domain . All it does is substitute godaddy's address for ours in the administrative contacts list. Type "whois sarahsthreads.com" in Terminal to see how it looks. I assume that if anyone needs to contact us, godaddy will forward any information on to us.

If you don't want to go that route, all you really need is an address and/or phone number that's not your home address, but that you can be reached through. There are all sorts of ways to accomplish this if you put your mind to it.

[steveedge]

No, people just won't be able to see your contact info. I spend half my time changing contact info. for my clients. Go daddy domain admin is easy and straightforward. just make sure to point that DNS to your website correctly.

[iMacfan]

So, just to check: Using the godaddy private registration looks like a sensible way of keeping my sanity - and people would still be able to contact me through the registrar if, for example, the domain was hijacked and used for spamming?

UPDATE: I went for it, thankyou!

Thanks for all the help,

David.