What you are after is a domain registrar, easy to google.

One of the biggiest and well known is godaddy, but all providers are very similar in price and features.

You might want to consider where you will host your website as most hosting services offer domain registration and it can be easier to keep all your website stuff together with one provider so it doesn't become confusing.

Aviod MelbourneIT, every interaction I've had with them over 7 years has been a problem.

Generally I use VentraIP.

Cheers,
Joel

Personally, it's been our experience that the *management* of your domain is frequently the biggest concern, not the basic registration. Many companies can offer domain registration, and while the domain is just parked there you don't experience any issues. You can, of course, point the domain to someone else's Name Servers and configure your domain through somebody else's domain services, but in our experience the smoothest and cleanest experience has been when we register and manage all our domains in the one spot, with a company that has a speedy and effective Zone Manager/Domain Management tool. NetRegistry (or their wholesale spin-off TPP Wholesale) have one of the best Domain packages on the market and it's competitively priced (though not as cheap as GoDaddy or some of the other 'discount' domain registrars). We've picked up a number of clients and transferred them across to our Reseller offering which we purchase from TPP Wholesale when they've come unstuck at the time they need to make changes to their domain configuration. And no matter who you use, you'll make you life a heck of a lot easier if you try to consolidate as many of them as possible to the one provider - there's nothing worse than numerous login credentials spread across multiple registrars and the owner can't remember how to log in to any of them.

We refer our clients to www.domain-names-only.com if just after a domain name. Be sure to get the DNS Zone Manager option - it's free.Vast range of TLDs. Domain registration privacy is also available on .com domains.

If purchasing a domain name as part of a hosted services package then we refer clients to clickonIT.com.au. Vast range of TLDs. Domain name pricing is the same as service above and major benefit is all services managed from a single account manager/login. Domain checker features finds available names in all TLDs.

Prinicpal advantage with both systems is quality support. 95% of the time you don't need it, but when you do it's usually urgent and important. Support is local and solves most problems fast.

Domain registration is subject to the rules and regulations of a variety of different authorities and agencies so procedures and requirements are often changing. Choosing a domain name and maintaining it as part of your business identity and IP are serious issues often taken lightly.

While most registrars do offer a virtually identical system, some do it better than others, so check them out and ask questions as you are doing here on SavvySME.

Good luck!

We use GoDaddy or VentraIP for our domains with the .au extensions. We find they have the best interface to work with and so far haven't had any real issues.