How to buy a domain name in Ghana (.com or .com.gh)

01What a domain is

A domain is the name people type to find you, like adjoaskitchen.com. Computers find each other by numbers. The DNS turns your name into the right number. Think of it as the internet's phone book.

You never own a domain forever. You rent it, a year (or a few years) at a time, from a company called a registrar.

Having a domain really means three separate jobs:

• The registrar is your landlord. You pay rent every year to keep the address.
• The DNS provider is the directory at the market entrance. It tells visitors where your website and your emails live.
• The host is the stall itself, where your website's files are kept.

One company can do all three, or you can split them. Either way, if you move your website, your domain doesn't move.

02Choosing a good name

• Short and sayable. Read it aloud as if on a phone call. If you have to spell it twice, try again.
• Your name or your business name. It builds trust, and it still fits if your services change.
• No hyphens, no numbers, no years. They're hard to say and easy to get wrong.
• Don't stuff it with keywords. A name like best-cheap-web-design-accra.com doesn't help you rank, and it looks like spam. You rank with your content, not your domain name.

Write down five options, cross out any you'd have to spell, and check the same name is free on Instagram and TikTok, so your handles can match.

If the name you want is taken but nobody is using it, choose another. Buying a taken domain from its owner is usually expensive and slow.

03.com or .com.gh?

.com is the ending people expect worldwide, including in Ghana. It works perfectly well for a Ghanaian business, and it's what our course uses. If your .com is taken, try adding a short word: adjoaskitchengh.com or adjoaskitchenaccra.com.

.com.gh is Ghana's own ending. It tells visitors straight away that you're a Ghanaian business. It's sold through Ghanaian registrars listed by NIC Ghana. Once you have it, you connect it to your website and email in exactly the same way as a .com.

Either works. Pick the one your customers will remember, and stick with it.

04Who should own the domain

The business owner, in their own account. The domain should be registered with the business's own email and paid on the owner's own card or payment method. Not the web designer's account, and not hidden inside the designer's price. The designer can be added to help manage it.

Here's why it matters. A designer registers a client's domain on their own account "to keep it simple". A year later they fall out, or the designer stops answering. The client can't renew their own domain or move their site. If the domain is in the owner's account from day one, the address always stays theirs.

When you set up the account, use a strong password from a password manager and switch on two-factor authentication. Type card details only into the registrar's own page, never into a chat.

05Renewal, and why domains get lost

Domain prices have two numbers: a first-year price, often a discount, and a renewal price you pay every year after that. The renewal price matters more. For what to budget, see what a website really costs a small business in Ghana.

If you don't renew, you lose the domain. Your website and emails stop working, and after a short grace period someone else can buy it.

To keep it safe:

• Turn on auto-renew, so the renewal is charged before it expires, or renew by hand if you're sure you'll remember.
• Put the renewal date in your calendar, with a reminder one month before.
• Click the verification email. After you buy, you'll get an email asking you to confirm your contact address. If you ignore it, the domain can be suspended.
• Switch on privacy protection, which hides your name, phone and home address from the public owner lookup.
• Switch on domain lock, which stops anyone moving your domain to another registrar without your approval.

06Connecting it to your website

Your registrar holds one setting that matters most: the nameservers. They tell the internet which DNS provider keeps your records. In our course, students point them to Cloudflare's free DNS.

Then you add a few records, copied from your host's own settings page:

• an A record, which points your plain domain to your website's host
• a CNAME record, which points the www version there too

Both versions should end up at one address, with the other redirecting to it. On hosts like Vercel, the padlock (HTTPS) is then set up for you, free.

Changes take time to reach everyone. That's called propagation. A normal record change usually takes minutes. A nameserver change can take a few hours, and occasionally up to a day or two. If it works on your laptop but not your phone yet, wait. Changing things again only resets the clock.

07Connecting it to email

Two things can use your domain for email:

• Emails your website sends, like order confirmations. You add a few public records, called SPF, DKIM and DMARC, that prove your domain allowed the email. That proof keeps confirmations out of the spam folder.
• An address on your card, like [email protected]. It can forward to the Gmail you already use, free, with Cloudflare Email Routing. Replies still come from your Gmail. Sending as hello@ needs a paid mailbox.

08Common mistakes

• The domain is in the designer's account. Move it to the owner's account while everyone is still talking.
• Forgetting the renewal. Budget for the renewal price, not the first-year one.
• Adding records at the registrar after the nameservers point elsewhere. They're ignored, silently. Records live wherever the nameservers point.
• Switching nameservers on a domain that already has email, before copying its email records to the new DNS provider. The email stops arriving.
• Paying twice. If a purchase says "processing" or shows an error, check your account before you try again.
• Extras in the checkout. You only need the domain. Read the cart before you pay.

09Learn to do it properly

Module 12 of the course, Launch Like a Pro, walks you through every step: buying your domain, handing its DNS to Cloudflare, connecting it to your site and sending emails from it. If you'd like to build and launch sites like this yourself, start with Module 0 of the course, free.