What this covers

You have a name and a brand. Now you need to own the space online before someone else does. This step covers domain purchase, DNS configuration, and grabbing social handles.

What I did

Buying footybeat.com took five minutes. I went to Namecheap, searched the name, added it to the cart, and paid. Twelve dollars. WHOIS privacy was included. The purchase was the easy part. What came after was not.

Namecheap dropped me into a DNS management panel immediately after checkout. DNS is the system that translates a domain name like footybeat.com into the actual server address where the site lives. I saw fields for A records, CNAME records, MX records, and half a dozen other things I did not fully understand. But I had read enough to know I needed an A record pointing to a host and a CNAME for the www version.

Here is where I made the mistake that defined this series. I configured the DNS records right there, that afternoon. The problem was that I had not set up Vercel yet. I had not created a project, had not deployed anything, had no server for the domain to point to. I was giving directions to a building that did not exist. The domain pointed nowhere for a full day while I figured out the rest.

The correct order, which I learned the hard way, is to set up your hosting first and configure DNS second. Vercel gives you the exact records you need once you add a custom domain to your project. I did it backwards.

While the domain was pointing at nothing, I opened X and searched for @footybeat. Available. I created the account. Then Bluesky. Available. Created it. Checked Instagram. Also clear. I grabbed all three handles that same afternoon. None of them had a profile picture or a bio yet. That was fine. The point was to claim the name before someone else had the same idea on the same day.

By the end of the afternoon I had a domain, DNS records that were premature, and three social handles. Two out of three done right.

Skip the mistakes

Buy the domain the moment you have the name. Do not wait until the project is ready. Domains cost twelve dollars a year and names get taken. The risk of buying too early is negligible. The risk of waiting is losing the name.

Do not configure DNS until your hosting is set up. This is the single biggest sequencing mistake I made in the entire build. The registrar will show you the DNS panel right after purchase, and every instinct will say "fill this in now." Resist that. Wait until your host tells you exactly what records to add. For Vercel, that means adding a custom domain in the dashboard and copying the values they provide.

DNS propagation takes time, anywhere from minutes to hours. If you add records and the domain does not work immediately, that is normal. If you added the wrong records, you will not find out until propagation completes, which means you could be staring at the wrong result for hours before realizing your mistake. Get the values right the first time.

Grab every social handle on the same day you buy the domain. X, Bluesky, Instagram, whatever platforms matter for your audience. You do not need content. You do not need a bio. You need the name reserved. Consistency across platforms is not a branding luxury. It is how people find you.

Turn on WHOIS privacy. Most registrars include it free now. If yours charges extra, pay it. Your home address does not need to be in a public database because you bought a domain name.

What's next

The domain exists and the handles are claimed, but there is no project on my computer yet.