[markOH]

i currently have someone developing a website for my business and am in the process of searching for companies to host the site. in the meantime, i am finalizing all of the print materials which will include web address and wanted to reserve the name i wish to use.
i am not ready to pay for full web hosting, but want to save the name and possibly link to my .Mac account for a "coming soon" type of basic webpage.
how do i go about this? i know there are a few sites that register names such as Register.com, Verio, etc. do i just pick one and go with it? then when im ready to have a company host my website, just have Register.com forward the address to the new site? i am new to this so any help would be appreciated.
oh...and is it possible to forward to .Mac account?
thanks!!
mark

[car1son]

Yup.
You can go to any of the registrar/hosting sites you like (I use DomainsDirect for my business, and GoDaddy and Dotster for some other work). You register the domain name (e.g MyFantasticCompany.com. Add Mail Forwarding (which will forward mail addressed to yourname@MyFantasticCompany.com and however other many addresses you want (based on their policy and pricing), plus - with most Mail forwarding services - a catch-all forward address that gets any other name sent to ...@MyFantasticCompany.com.). Add URL Forwarding (so browser requests for http://www.MyFantasticCompany.com are sent to some other URL, such as http://homepage.mac....me/index.html.)
When you're ready for a fulll-sized web page, most of those same companies do web hosting and you can just add that to your account.
It's worth shopping around after you figure out what you want now and for the future. The prices - al la carte and bundled - that these companies offer vary considerably. You might find one that includes a small web site allocation in the initial bundle price, and then you can just expand it later into your final website (check with teh website designer if he's using any special features for the host site.)