Ethical Domain Name Registration

Does someone else own YOUR Online Identity?

Your domain name, its very important to you. It’s your identity online. Why would you want anyone else to own it?

Before you go with a registrar to get your domain name, what should you bear in mind? There are plenty of hosting companies out there that offer you a free domain name. Before you think what a great bargain you just got, find out who will LEGALLY own the domain name. YOU need to be the owner and have control over where that domain name is hosted. If you are not the legal registrant, but the hosting company is, you could find that you have no control over where the domain resides.

What if you fall out with the hosting company? Perhaps their uptime doesn’t live up to your expectations…any one of a million reasons to move your website to someone else. For your website to be seen somewhere else, you need to change the nameservers that the domain name points to. If you don’t have the facility with the registrar to do that yourself, then you are relying on the hosting company to do it for you. Many hosting companies will do that for you quite quickly, but then why should you rely on someone else to do it.

What if you are in dispute with that company over something?

A friend of mine took up bargain hosting and domain name registration for his online shop, he got his domain name as part of the package. For a while everything went well, the shop was gaining customers all the time, and things were looking good.

Then he was sent an email from the hosting company that he was using too many resources even though his package said it was “unlimited”. He of course disputed needing to pay more and suspended his hosting until it could be sorted out. So, he decided to go with another hosting company, that would be easy enough he thought, just a matter of moving his site to someone else, after all, there are plenty of them out there. Trouble was, he found he didn’t actually own the domain name. The hosting company had bought it on his behalf but he wasn’t the legal registrant. Absolutely nothing he could do about it, not without expensive legal proceedings to get ownership of his own domain name.

He either had to stick to his principals and have no shop online, or sort it out with the hosting company and pay more so that he could at least carry on in business.

Scary? Yes it is, and it happens all the time!

There are lots of reports where they REFUSE to change the nameserver details until your dispute is settled. No-one gets to see your site because it can’t be hosted anywhere else, which is even more important when its a business that relies on its website for turnover. Would you give someone else that much control over your offline business? No of course you wouldn’t.

Ideally you should have a control panel for your domain name which allows you to change at the very least, the legal registrant and nameserver details yourself, so if the control panel is not advertised, ask the company how you change the details if needed. You may think it will be complicated if you’re new to online business but its no harder than filling in a form – and we’re all used to that right?

If the company you decide to go with assures you, that you will be the legal registrant, then get it in writing, and once the domain is registered go to whois.net, put in your domain name and check it right away. It will have the legal registrant details, and if there is any discrepancy contact them right away about it.

Lynnette Friar
http://www.allynne.com

copyright 2007 Allynne-Group This article may be reproduced as long as the author and links are unaltered.