Thread: Domain Names

How do you go about OWNING your domain name so to you and you alone own it? And not GoDaddy or Google or someone else owns it with you?

You own your domain name when you purchase it through a registrar such as godaddy. Do a Whois and you will see you indeed own it. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

Think of a registrar as a Broker.

Thanks, I have an idea for a website I want to create I just wanted to make sure I own it before I start it and then see where it leads me once I start.

Yeah, it is such a nice!!!

Now I am just beginning to learn how to create a website and get it the way I want it

With my first website business I did not have a clue! I went to a web person who designed and then charged me a yearly rate for hosting. When I then discovered that I could outsource work on my site. They took my web domain name etc. Long story short. I then found out that luckily as I had registered it myself I could go to the MOTHERSHIP of domain registration to prove the site and domain was mine. A lot of hassle and a lot of faxes later I managed to get the site and domain name sorted. My advice - NEVER as the book and DeMarco advises let someone else have control of the most important element of your business - through being naive I did. Register your own names and make sure you have your own hosting - access to your own cpanel etc. I am currently supporting many businesses who have also been held to ransom by so called web designers that see their income stream vanishing away.

Originally Posted by hedgehog757

How do you go about OWNING your domain name so to you and you alone own it?

Technically you don't, at all.

You can only ever lease domain-names, on an annual basis, through a registrar. You never actually own them.

Registration-fees can vary considerably, between different registrars for the same domain-extensions so (especially if registering a domain with an unusual extension) it can be well worth shopping around. But the most important thing is not to register a domain-name in the same place where you want to host the website associated with it. That's all downside.

There is a lot of this stuff I have to learn. Thanks for the info Noel and Lexy. What is the Mothership of Domain Names? Is that where you wold register your site so you own the rights to it for whatever the contract term is?

Originally Posted by hedgehog757

What is the Mothership of Domain Names?

LOL, the cheapest ones with private whois. Altavista that stuff, will you

Altavista still exists? lol

Originally Posted by lexy

But the most important thing is not to register a domain-name in the same place where you want to host the website associated with it. That's all downside.

Lexy, what is the downside of registering a domain and hosting it through the same registrar? I'm just curious because I've never read anything about that.

Originally Posted by Trevor Kuntz

Lexy, what is the downside of registering a domain and hosting it through the same registrar?

In a sense, admittedly, it only really matters if/when something goes wrong. (But, as we all know, that "only happens all the time").

If your host isn't also your registrar, then in the event of any accident/problem, if anything ever goes wrong with your hosting, you're in control, not them. And can avoid nightmares, disasters, long delays and entirely unexpected "ransom demands". And can re-host your site somewhere else the next day, minimising the commercial interruption.

There's a juge number of horror stories of hosting/registration/control disasters scattered about in forums, almost all of which could have been avoided, simply by registering and hosting in two different places.

If you were ever to get accused of spamming, or had hackers install a malicious script on your site, or otherwise due to the incompetence of the hosting company you had your account suspended ... if the relationship with your Web hosting company goes sour for any of these or other reasons, as long as your domain name is registered somewhere else, then to re-establish your site all you need to do is get hosting set up with a new company, copy your site over, and point your domain name registration to your site’s new location.

But if your Web host is also your domain-name registrar, then you're sunk: you also need to transfer the registration, as well, probably for a very large additional fee which you didn't know about. And worse yet, if the hosting company decides it really doesn’t like you, and it controls your domain name registration, it may even decide to cancel the registration altogether.

Also, if the company went out business, you have no way of changing your nameservers, so you'd lose your domain, and you'd also lose the files on your server.

It's one of those issues which so many people look at and think to themselves "Eew, well, those are all other people and they must have done something wrong: it wouldn't ever happen to me".

Until someone on one of their lists reports them, even with absolutely no justification at all, to their host for alleged "spamming" and their website disappears and the host (in accordance with its TOS which few people have ever read all the way through at the time they registered the domain) suddenly wants hundreds of dollars to release the domain so they can get it back online somewhere else.

As a search of various internet marketing forums will show, some of the most popular domain-name registrars are actually notorious for causing major problems and interruptions to their clients' businesses in this regard.

The point is that "whether something goes wrong" may not be within your own control - it can be just one of those pretty random things that isn't your fault at all and "could have happened to anybody".

Originally Posted by lexy

If your host isn't also your registrar, then in the event of any accident/problem, if anything ever goes wrong with your hosting, you're in control, not them. And can avoid nightmares, disasters, long delays and entirely unexpected "ransom demands". And can re-host your site somewhere else the next day, minimising the commercial interruption.

Oh, I've heard anything about that. That could definitely be a problem. I have my domains registered and hosted through GoDaddy. Maybe I should look into changing the hosting.

Originally Posted by Trevor Kuntz

I have my domains registered and hosted through GoDaddy. Maybe I should look into changing the hosting.

GoDaddy, unfortunately, has among internet marketers a particularly bad reputation for a couple of the potential problems I've mentioned above. Their primary expertise seems to be as a registrar rather than as a host, and I think most people would advise you to use them for that service rather than as a host. They certainly seem - according to Worpress experts - to have had more than their share of Wordpress incompatibility problems, too?

Of course, these things are "opinion only", and there are also people - even in the "Warrior Forum" where there must be 100 threads urging people to stay away from GoDaddy - who can say "Well, I've been hosting all my sites at GoDaddy for three years and never had a problem".

I've tried a lot of different services, myself, and after a few years' experience have come down to recommending Namecheap as a domain registrar and Hostgator as a hosting company, but these are only personal preferences, really. Neither is actually the cheapest but both seem to have customer service departments that are more or less second-to-none. (And to people as technophobic and incompetent as me, that matters!). Good luck!

I agree with Lexy above. Stay away from GoDaddy. Apart from the annoyance of their insane amount of upsells (it can take a dozen "no!'s" to get to the cart where you can actually pay for purchase) they also charge an extortionate amount for re-registering an expired domain.

I use Namecheap and TotalChoiceHosting and have done since last century. 99.9% uptime at TCH and Namecheap (despite their horrendous new website) resolve names very quickly. With a reseller (or dedicated server) account at TCH and using Namecheap I can go from idea for a domain name to up and running wordpress website in about 9 minutes. Hostgator is not recommended if you like to use "catch all" accounts for emails.

Not sure if they (Hostgator) run "Fantastico" which is a suite of fast scripts for doing a heap of cool stuff (like adding a wordpress site) quickly. Speed is not always an issue when building a site (they often sit around for weeks or months afterwards while you decide what you're going to do with them) but I've owned over 200 domains and dozens of active websites at one time or other and have always used Namecheap and TotalChoiceHosting (TCH). TCH also has 24 hours support chat lines which have been handy more than a few times.

HTH.

Bill

Thanks for the advice guys. I chose GoDaddy mainly because they're based out of AZ (I like to support local companies) and I have had some really good experiences with their tech support guys, but I was not aware of these issues. The main thing I don't like about GoDaddy is that they don't offer free email accounts for the domain.
Unfortunately, my main site is in the 4 month of a one year hosting plan with an SSL and all of my satellite sites are on an unlimited-domain 5 year hosting plan. So I'm not sure what the best option is.

Thanks for all the posts everyone. It actually helps a lot. Most of that stuff I did not know about with registering a name and hosting on separate sites. I did not know you could do that. Thank you.

Trevor, I think GoDaddy stopped being a "local" company a long time ago so I wouldn't worry too much about that. If you insist on staying with them just redirect your domains to the host of your choice. Someone who is reliable and has a real commitment to it's clients and who come with a recommendation. I get nothing from TCH for recommending them, I just have over 10 years of fantastic, calm and invisible hosting and great service and that's worth a lot.

When you host your websites with someone who is a dedicated hosting company you can have as many email addresses as you like (using cPanel). I'd be more than willing to show you how if you need.

In my experience (since 1997) of owning and building websites nothing has been more simple as the model I'm suggesting (Name server pointing to separate host). It's peaceful, easy to maintain and there's nothing I haven't been able to do (some hosts limit what you can do). I wasn't aware that there was a "locked in for 5 years" deal on SSL. If you're not actually locked in, I'd look at what's best for your piece of mind because 5 years is a very long time in this game. If there's anything at all confusing about owning and hosting a website I'd more happy to explain it to you (perhaps over a skype call). I love talking about it and demystifying web hosting and explaining in simple terms what sometimes can be a pretty confusing topic.

Good luck with your websites. Owning and running a website can be a lot of fun. The sky's the limit and ideas flow almost constantly, the last thing I'd want is for you is hosting confusion to take away from that feeling when it can be a very simple affair but if you're happy where you are and how it all works then at least you're a little more informed now.

All the best.

Bill, I have two hosting plans (well actually, three, because I was dumb and wasted $50). One is for my main site and is the only one with SSL. That one is only on a one year contract, so I think I'll take your advice and move to TCH in October. The other hosting plan is a 5 year plan that I host all of my little Wordpress sites on. I believe that I have 14 sites on that plan at the moment and none of them have SSL.

Do you think that if something were to go wrong with one of the sites, it would take down all of the sites on the hosting plan?
And if I were to move to TCH, do they offer any type of unlimited-domain hosting?

Thanks again for all the advice and help.

With all of that information out there which one would you all say is probably the best for someone starting out to create a website?