Yes, this is a hard task. By chance I found the following regular expression at a discussion board recently. I haven't tested it thoroughly, but it looks good enough to give it a try:
I can recommend the Kommodo IDE from ActiveState. There is also a limited free version available, but it is worth the money you spend for the full version.
You cannot register a domain name without having it set up on a DNS server for most top-level domains (to prevent bulk registrations). So for example, the German DE-NIC requires that each domain is...
Sure, but for example http://www.sunnyscript.com/demo/ isn't a sub-domain, it is just a path to the folder /demo within your web home directory. A sub-domain would be http://demo.sunnyscript.com...
I don't think that a close family member will sign a contract - nor would I ask for. Let's imagine the following situation: "Sure Mom, you get your own website, but first of all sign here.". No, I...
Yes, we do so, but just have a free standard entry (not sure if this is possible in the US yellow pages as well). And it is exactly worth what we pay for... nothing.
It is to say that even "www" is a sub-domain. The 'pure' domain name consists simply of the label and the top-level domain, e.g. "sunnyscript.com" or generally "domain.tld".
Just ensure that when signing the contract, the webdesigner grants you full rights on their works (including distribution rights). Also ensure to disallow them selling the same design to an other...
Hard to recommend something without knowing your hosting needs (just a shared hosting account, virtual server, dedicated server, expected traffic, required bandwidth, required support, ...).
As noted by Tweak4 already, there is really no way to do this with JavaScript - JavaScript can only call third party applications, like your mail client using the mailto-protocol.
Either you trust yourself to a domain agent (look at search engines for some companies, there are thousands). These people either work on a fix rate or commission-based.
If you want to manage this with PHP (as your headline indicates), you may repost your inquiry at http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=16 instead of ;-)