How to host a website with a certain domain somewhere else than at the company I bought the domain from?

domain transfer

First, it may be in their terms of service (TOS) that you can't host elsewhere. That would be unusual; most companies allow you to host anywhere.

In your account at the domain company, you should be able to set the "Nameservers" or "NS" for the domain. This tells the domain where to "point". If you host it there, they set it to their servers.

In this case, your friend needs to run a nameserver which you would enter in the settings page at your domain company. Alternativly, he could open an account at opendns.com, who would perform the nameserver function and point the domain to the IP of his server.

Your friend needs a static IP for this to work.

Beyond that, why not host it at a hosting company? For about $40.00 / year, you can get it hosted. The big hosting companies have dozens of free addons (blog features, slideshows, chat, CMS, classified ads) that I doubt your friend offers. They also are on fast internet backbones, do backups, and you would never have to worry about downtime. I have dozens of sites, and I no longer mess with trying to run on my own servers it's just not worth the headache.

Plus, when you break up with your friend and aren't friends anymore, it's possible that your site could be held hostage.

Yes, the company you purchased from should give you directions. The hosting site I use just gives me a point to # and I go in and change the A Record. It is really pretty simple. Just have to play around with it until you figure it out or give the company a call and they will guide you. Best of luck!

you are allowed to transfer your domain name. First make sure it is unlocked and get the authorization code. Once you do that, you can go to any domain registrar to transfer it to them. I would use an ICANN registrar and not a reseller though. There are a number of registrars out there, just take your pick. I use omnis.com their pricing and plans are pretty straight forward. you do not need to host with them.

TRANSFER the name. check with the company that you are going to switch to and they will give you the details on how.

I just hope you haven't hooked up with one that you never own your domain name they do and just let you use it, as they really own the name and you don't. There are those out there that do this, and it is a crock of crap.