Registering Domain, multiple extensions - how and costs?

[deddard]

Hi

I'm working on a program which I will be marketing in a year or two (with a little luck! - still getting the hang of all the programming!)
I'll need a website for the usual advertising/information, and I envisage that a bulletin board would also be a useful feature.

There are obviously multiple extensions to website names - .co.uk. .com, .net etc. and the price of obtaining all the relevant ones isn't particularly high. The main reason for wanting these is obviously one of copyright/security.
What I don't understand though, is whether it would be possible to register them all, but when the time comes for hosting, have them all point to the one site (e.g. - .com) Would I have to pay a hosting fee for each site, and forward the user from there? or is there some way to pay for the hosting for the main site, and have the others connected to it without having to pay any extra. (I assume that I could get a basic package for the 'forwarding sites' and have them actually forward the user)
I'm probably a couple of years away from the program - it's on paper at the minute(flowcharts etc), but I'd also like to use this time to sort out what I'll need to do in the future. help appreciated.

[mjc]

There are several ways to go about it, but one of the easiest would be to find a hosting company that allows you to "connect" several domains to one site.

Basically it woul be something like this

Name IP
yoursite.com 123.xxx.xxx.xxx
yoursite.net 123.xxx.xxx.xxx
yoursite.co.uk 123.xxx.xxx.xxx

Many of the packages I have seen usually start out at about 5, but have seen more than 20 allowed. Of course if you have your own server (co-location is probably best, you rent rackspace and pay for bandwidth, and supply the server and software, and sometimes they provide maintenance) you can have as many as you can get (but that is another ball game). It is unlikely that you will be able to acquire all the domain names you would like (they may already be in use), especially in the .net and .com areas.

[deddard]

Thanks for that. I've checked that the particular sites are still free (although for how long is a different matter!) I'll have a look around to see what hosts charge for this sort of thing.