New to Domain Names

Hey everyone! I have set up a web server for my website on my second computer (attached to a router). It is running apache 1.3, with php on windows xp. I would now like to register a domain name for it (something like mysite.com or mysite.net). I am very new to this, so i dont really know where to start. Is there anything i have to put on my webserver? Where would you recomend i purchase a domain name? Also any other important info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!!

well you need to register the name, i use godaddy.com or register.com - godaddy has 24 hour customer support. after that you need a DNS server to forward request to yourDomain.com to your IP (assuming its a static IP address). hope that helps. if not, email me at jquintana@simplifiedsolutionz.com and I'll walk you through it in detail.

ok, email sent. If you want, we can also work it out here...either way is fine with me

Ok...we seem to have run into a snag here. We installed simple DNS Plus (there was another one called BIND-PE, but it seemed to be much harder to use), and entered information for a record, but when i went to a command prompt and entered "ping ns1.virtual-hangar.com", it returned the following error:

"Ping request could not find host ns1.virtual-hangar.com. Please check the name and try again."

If anyone has any ideas as to why this may not be working, that would be very helpful! Thanks a lot!!

Ok, i found ZoneEdit.com, but i have a question about setting it up. I have changed the name servers on godaddy.com to the ones that zone edit told me to, but now i need to set up an A record (correct?). When i go to do this, it asks me for an IP address, but since i have multiple sites on my server, i need to enter the IP, followed by the folder that this site is in. The problem is that there is not enough room in that box for me to enter that information (i.e. xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/Path to my site/). Any ideas on how to get around that? Thanks!!