I know you’re the one who can help me with this. :) My husband and I were discussing it and neither of us knew enough to know we were right.

When it comes to buying domain names, you buy the name but you also buy the IP address. (Correct?) My husband says to change 100pounds.com to overthemoon.com, it should only be a matter of altering a DNS entry and that the underlying IP address could stay the same with a new name. (Taking for granted no one else has that name.) Thus eliminating the need to buy a new IP with the tag/label overthemoon.com. Yes, there could be a charge for changing the tag/label for that IP address, but it shouldn’t be as much if one is just switching instead of buying overthemoon.com *in addition* to 100pounds.com

I say that even if it’s merely changing the DNS entry, I still have to go buy overthemoon.com for the *same price* I purchased 100pounds.com before I can use it – even if I want to switch from one to the other instead of purchasing one *in addition* to the other.

No, you don’t buy an IP when you buy a domain. IPs are controlled by the web host and you can move from host to host. IPs are leased to the web host and they let you use them while your with them. Here’s how it works. Domain names and IP addresses work together, but they aren’t tied to together. Think of a domain as a house and the IP as the address. You can move to a new house and then your address has to change. But it gets complicated because you could also be in an apartment with many people sharing the same IP. That’s how hosting woks these days. IPs are no longer the location of just one web site, it’s the location of the server and the server looks to see which site was requested and then responds with that site. IPs can change and are used in the background to locate where a domain is.

The bottom line is, you shouldn’t worry about the IP. It doesn’t matter if you are staying with the same web host or moving, just buy the new domain and get it setup and you can then redirect the old domain to the new one so that visitors automatically get forwarded. When you buy the new domain all you have to do is give the name servers for your host and setup the domain with your host. They’ll automatically assign an IP if they use dedicated IPs or they’ll add you to a shared hosting server, which is most likely the case. Either way, you’ll likely never need to know your IP unless you are trying to do something specific. For general hosting purposes though, you don’t even have to think about IPs.

So the process for setting up your new domain should be like this:

1. Buy the new domain (Set the DNS / Nameservers for your web host)
2. Get hosting setup for the domain
3. Get your site setup
4. Redirect your old site to the new domain

Hope that helps!

Technorati Tags: Domain, DNS, IP