People hosting their sites on free web hosts (like me) have a hard time with their domain names. Even though most free hosting providers allow the use of sub-domains, the site’s address remains ugly. To solve this problem, a good idea is to sign-up to a free domain name service to replace your existing (and ugly) address.

One of these free domain service providers is CO.CC. To get your own domain there, make sure your desired domain name isn’t taken and then sign-up for an account. Once you’ve signed up, you can choose what you want your domain to do; either it simply redirects to your original address or you can do a little advanced tweaking to make it your native domain name.

Whichever option you’d like to use, following the tutorial below will make things much easier.

A. If you want the domain to redirect to your original address (Easier)

After signing up for an account on CO.CC, login to your account.

Step 1

After logging in, click on “Manage Domain”. (You should have registered a domain by now)

Step 2

There should be a “Setup” button near your domain name. Click on it.

Step 3

There should be three options to choose from: Name Server, Zone Records or URL Forwarding. For this part, we’re going to choose URL Forwarding.

Now enter the required details. See the image below for more information.

Step 4

Once you’re done entering your site’s details, click “Setup”. The changes should be applied really quickly.

Difference between Path Forwarding and URL Hiding:

- Path forwarding just redirects visitors to your original domain.

- URL Hiding hides your original URL but replaces your favicon with their own.

B. Changing your whole domain name by using Domain Name Servers. (A little harder)

Instead of choosing the URL Forwarding option on the Domain setup page, choose the Name Server option.

This is the hardest part; you have to find your web hosting provider’s DNS. You can do this by either contacting them or by checking out the support forum.

Once you find the addresses, enter them in the boxes and click “Setup”. Domain setup should take no more than 48 hours.

Step 5

Here’s a list of some other free domain providers:

CO.NR

Dot.TK

Uni.CC (Opening soon)

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