You know it’s true - you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. That could apply to your domain name (your .com, .net, etc.). Imagine your business cards, signs, print marketing materials, Email addresses, all referring to a .com that you don’t own anymore. Customers go to your site and find it missing - or worse - with other stuff there that you have no control over.

To prevent this from happening to you…

1. Register the domain name yourself. Go out to the registration service of your choice ( Network Solutions provides full service, complete with telephone assistance; lower-scale providers we’ve used include Dotster and Yahoo), enter the domain name to be registered - they will let you know if it’s already taken - and sign up… but don’t get lured into signing up for Email, hosting, etc. — read up on the basics of domains and hosting and why to keep Domain and Hosting Separate.
2. Be sure that the registration is in your name, your own account, your own credit card and with your own contact information. If you choose to have your web designer (or web-savvy friend, etc.) register your domain for you, do not let them simply add your domain onto their account. You lose too much control that way, are depending on them to be there years down the road when your domain registration needs renewal or you need to make changes, and are vulnerable if you lose contact with this person, the login information gets lost, etc.
3. Write your login information down on paper (yes paper) and store with your other important papers. You will need to log in at future dates to renew your registration, update your contact Email, update your credit card, register hosting provider changes, etc.
4. Be careful about the contact Email address you use in your registration. Keep it up to date, and make sure you check and use this Email address regularly. This is where renewal notices are sent! One day I went to show off work we did for a client and their web site was gone - replaced by a domain registration placeholder page. Yikes! Turns out that renewal notices were going to an old Email address they no longer checked, and their registration expired. Luckily, after we notified them, they were able to log in and renew the service before the domain was put up for grabs. Note that some free Email services may suspend your account if you do not use it regularly — so again, your renewal warning could get bounced without you knowing about it.
5. Consider”Privacy” services. Depending on the registration service, this is an added feature (usually costing just a buck or two more per year) that keeps your registration information (name, address, contact Email) away from telemarketers and spam robots.
6. Once your domain is registered, and you have hosting set up (which means entering nameserver information with the domain service), “lock” or “protect” the domain. Not all registration services may have this option. It makes it such that the domain registration cannot be transferred to another provider without a check system where an authorization code is sent to your contact email first (again the importance of the contact email). There are scams out there that attempt to trick you into switching domain registrars; this will forestall that.
7. If you registration lapses, don’t panic yet — there is a 30 day grace period (”redemption”) where you can save it from oblivion or evil hands and bring it back to life. (We helped another client through that one.)

Those few tips will help you get on track with your domain registration and keep your domain safe in your own hands!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Domains & Hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.