What do you mean, I don’t own my domain?

When we first started and for about our first 10 years in business, a large portion of our business was website development and website and email hosting. In most cases, we handled the full suite of products and services from domain name registration for new domains or transfers for existing domains, website development for new websites or migrations for existing sites, email setup and migration, setting up, moving and managing the DNS and then the ongoing hosting, maintenance and security for the lot of it. A lot has changed since then and, when we ultimately jettisoned the last of the web and email hosting, it had moved from a primarily IT domain to a primarily marketing domain and that just wasn’t us. At first, we saw marketing companies that just setup reseller accounts with companies like Hostinger, BlueHost, DreamHost, HostGator and the like and only had to know more about what was going on than their customers to make it work and, in most cases, it did. When a customer moved from Marketing Company A to Marketing Company B, Marketing Company B would just create the account on their shared hosting account, do a domain name transfer to switch EVERYTHING and the customer was starting over anytime that they moved. The email may still work or it may not but, if it didn’t, Marketing Company B just explained that “This stuff happens“, setup new email accounts and everyone went about their merry way. Occasionally, something would go really sideways or the customer would actually need their old email and we’d get a call. Now though, we’re seeing something different. We still see the occasional oops but, more and more, we’re seeing these companies actively leveraging the customers ignorance against them and profiting from it. So, with this article, I’m hoping to highlight some of the key components that you need to be aware of and some of the ways that you can avoid problems with your website and email.

Domain Name – Your domain name, in most cases, is what you think of as your website. Our domain name, for example, is ctc.co (or cybertechcafe.net). You can add a hostname, like www, but that generally just points to your domain name. Your domain name is the critical part of your website, your email and most anything that you do online. You register your domain name with a Domain Name Registrar (GoDaddy, Network Solutions, NameCheap, etc.) typically in one year increments. Whoever has the registration for the domain name, owns it.

• If you’re looking to get started and if you’re comfortable with it, register your own domain name yourself. If you’re not comfortable registering it yourself, find someone that you trust to register it for you using an email that you control. That email will be critical if there’s ever a problem.
• Register it with a reputable domain name registrar. There are tons of domain name registrars out there, but go with someone that’s been around for a while. Some examples are GoDaddy and Network Solutions. Network Solutions is arguably the oldest but they’re also probably the most expensive and the most difficult to deal with. GoDaddy will try to sell you something new at every turn but they’re less expensive, have better customer service and their DNS replication is lightning fast (what DNS replication is isn’t terribly relevant to this post but fast DNS is good).
• The domain name will expire if you don’t renew it and, if it does, everything attached to it (website, email, etc.) will go away with it. If it expires, best case scenario, your registrar will hold it for you and let you just renew it. In some cases though, they’ll hold it but you’ll have to pay a little some thing extra (typically a reasonable fee) to get it. Worst case though, they’ll release it and someone else will register it and hold it for ransom. It’s best just not to let it expire.
• Use an email that you own that’s not part of the domain that you’re registering. If you ever have a problem with that domain, it’s most likely going to impact email. If your domain name is ctc.co and your registration email is user@ctc.co, you won’t be able to communicate with the domain name registrar to get it fixed because your email will be down. If you use something like a gmail account that’s not on your domain, you won’t have that problem.
• If someone, an IT company, marketing company or that shady kid down the block that “knows about computers” can convince you to let them manage your domain and transfer it to them, know that you’re letting them own your domain. There are plenty of ways for you to maintain ownership of your domain while still giving someone else all that they need to build, host and maintain your website, email and whatever else.

Website – Your website is simply what people see when they type your domain name into a web browser like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge, etc. You can design and develop a website yourself or have someone do it for you and there are a ton of free tools out there to do it. Probably the most popular one right now is called WordPress. Once the website is designed and developed and ready for the public to see, you’ll be ready to setup web hosting for your domain name and point it to your website.

• If you have someone else build the website for you, be certain to agree (and document it) up front that you own the website once it’s done and get a copy. In a lot of cases, we’re seeing website developers / designers / marketing companies build a website for a very reasonable fee up front in exchange for a monthly fee to host and maintain it. If you ever try to take the website somewhere else, you find that there’s a fee (often significant) for you to buy it from them.
• Beware of sites that offer easy to use tools to let you build your own website. In most cases, these websites can’t be moved away from those sites and, in some cases, once the introductory deal expire, they’re quite expensive.
• Once your website is live, especially if you’re using something like WordPress, you’ll want to keep it up to date. WordPress does a fantastic job of notifying you when it has updates to install and can even install them for you in many cases.
• In addition to regularly installing updates, you’ll want to grab a backup of your website from time to time and keep a copy of it locally (don’t just store it at the website). When you put off installing an update and then get a call from someone asking you if you knew that there were “naked ladies” on your website, you’ll be thankful for the backups.

Hosting – Once you have your domain name registered and your website designed and developed, you’ll need a server that’s always on and connected to the Internet to host it so that other people can access it. In many cases, this is offered as part of a package deal offered by a web design / development / marketing company and is included in their fees.

• The hosting is literally just storage space on an Internet connected computer for your website to live.
• In most cases, your website can live on any hosting provider (including, in most cases, your domain name registrar).
• If your IT company, website design / development company or marketing company is pushing you to use their web hosting, that’s a bit of a yellow flag. If they’re pushing you to transfer your domain name to them so that they can just handle it, that’s more of a red flag. If you don’t understand why they’re wanting to do this and they can’t explain it in a way that you’re comfortable with, it’s often easier and a lot cheaper to get someone familiar with the space on a quick conference call before they potentially break (or steal) something than after.
• It can’t be said enough, if someone, an IT company, marketing company or that shady kid down the block that “knows about computers” can convince you to let them manage your domain and transfer it to them, know that you’re letting them own your domain. There are plenty of ways for you to maintain ownership of your domain while still giving someone else all that they need to build, host and maintain your website, email and whatever else.

Need IT Support for your Home or Business? We’d love to help!

Are you a small to medium sized business looking to leverage technology and enable your business and workforce to work smarter and more efficiently?  Do you already have computers, servers, firewalls, VPNs or other technology that you’re not taking full advantage of?  Are you looking for an IT Service Provider who understands small to medium sized businesses needs and the challenges that we face that can work with you to grow your business rather than just sell you time?

Cyber Tech Cafe an  IT Service Company with a focus on helping small to medium business get the most out of their technology investment.  As a small business ourselves, we understand the challenges you face and have designed our service offerings to help you get the most out of your technology dollar.  We offer on-call, as needed support if you just need a quick fix or extra set of hands right now.  We also offer maintenance plans that we call “MyIT” that are designed to address the most common concerns (patch management, disaster recovery / backup, log review, etc.) that are based on the number of workstations and servers that you have and have no term contract.  We believe that, if you find value in what we’re doing, you’ll find a way to keep us around without contract saying that you have to.

If you have questions about the MyIT plans or have an IT need that you need addressed right now, let us know.  We look forward to the opportunity to earn your business.

Article Submitted by Nathan J. Underwood, CEH