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THE ONLY WAY TO GUARANTEE YOU ARE THE ONLY JOHNLOOP in THE UNIVERSE
If you want to acquire a domain name, such as "johnloop.com" you need to investigate whether the name is available or not, and then pay a small fee to "own" it. You can then go to the domain name provider, and have any references to your domain name redirected to your personal web space on your ISP, or any other web space that you have setup. PCcitizen.com is handled by www.directnic.com .
If you follow this path, then there is no need for you to setup a DNS server. It is handled by your domain name provider, directnic.com in my case. On directnic.com, I (at one time...) instructed that any references to pccitizen.com [which wind up here because they are handling DNS for the pccitizen.com domain] be redirected to my personal web page at bellsouth.net.
If you do choose to setup a DNS server, you can safely and quickly do so as long as you are behind a NAT router. Also, you will need Linux, or one of the server versions of Windows, such as Windows 2003 server which provide the DNS server. There are many quirks about setting up a DNS server [this will NOT be a caching DNS server, but a full blooded primary server], including populating the necessary config files on the server. It is a great way to learn about this service however. You will setup each of your PCs on your home LAN to point to your local DNS server as the primary DNS server. Your DNS server will then point to your ISP's DNS server for it name resolutions that it cannot handle.
Update late 2003: I actually subscribed to the web hosting service at directnic, and the redirection is no longer used. Instead I have replaced the index.html page at bellsouth.net with a redirection back to "www.pccitizen.com." You may actually get stuck inside the old web site, unless you click out to the main site first. Once you come in from www.pccitizen.com then you are entirely in the new site.
The personal web site on BellSouth.net was not the most efficient way to setup a web site, but it was the simplest and the cheapest. Some people will run a small business selling merchandise on ebay, and using the personal web space on their ISP for image storage for their merchandise. If you are a larger business, or you expect significant volume of access to your web site, then there are web hosting providers which charge more money and provide more web space [bellsouth.net only allows about 10 MByte of space and so many thousands of hits per month. Other ISPs are similar for residential accounts]. There are certainly people who will design your web site for you, and maintain it. This is big business these days.
A "domain name" is a unique name in all the world, followed by one of the suffixes such as .com, .net, org, .edu, .mil, etc. There are also suffixes delegated to each of the countries in the world, such as "us" for the USA, "iq" for Iraq, etc. A ".com" address is still the most recognizable address these days, but ".net" is also very popular. There have been new ones, such as ".info" ".biz" etc which are now available. You need to go to any of a number of web sites to investigate this. www.directnic.com is one of many places.
If you choose to setup a DNS server behind your NAT/router, then the name of your domain should be "mydomain.local." It cannot be the name of your real domain, if you have purchased one, because the name will not resolve the address of your private machine [it will resolve to your hosting company server].
A "fully qualified domain name" is a specific machine [also called a host] on the Internet with its name written in a special way, such as "host.johnloop.com."
See this page for some info on how the DNS system works.
There are other options emerging for running your own DNS server, in both Windows and Linux environments. "Dnsmasq" is a Linux variant that makes it very simple - no need to configure the cryptic BIND config files, it simply picks up entries in your hosts file. See my Linux page here.