Sandy,

No, registering and hosting are not the same. Registration is just reserving the domain for yourself and making a public record of who its administrator is. Here's the thing: you can register as many domains as you want, but you can't really do anything with them (i.e., you can't actually upload a "site" the world can see) until you order hosting also.

Paying for hosting is sort of like leasing an apartment. You pay rent (hosting fees) for the right to occupy a certain unit (domain and server space) of his building. Usually, your landlord (host company) also provides some level of maintenance, security, and/or utility services (tech support, spam guards, etc.) as part of your lease package. That may be a weak analogy--does it make sense?

I agree it's simplest to use the same company for both registration and hosting, but you don't have to. As for why I switched, I'd feel kind of funny giving any of the "dirty details" of my bad experience publicly. I'll PM you.

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AnnaLisa Michalski, Sunny Words Writing Services