Starting with the end: If you’ve got a domain name (ex. www.mycompany.com), make sure you’re listed on the contact record – most certainly as the registrant, ideally as one of the other contacts as well.

Again and again and again, I keep running into this:  A client asks us to manage their domain, either for hosting (www.stwhosting.com), to transfer to our iclaro website service (www.iclaro.com), or for other reasons.

To do this, minimally we need to update the name servers associated with their name registration so that they point to the new website location.

Generally speaking, the client will have no idea about where their name is registered or what the id and password are to access it.

We can look this up, and generally, provided the client has been included as a contact for the domain, we can initiate a password request, which will send the client their user id and password.

Nine times out of ten though I find that the domain is registered entirely in the name of the person who first set it up: likely a long-gone web designer, hosting company, or someone else!

A name registration record has four contact fields – the registrant name (which should be the name of the company or person using the domain), an admin contact, technical contact, and billing contact.

Minimially, the registrant field should be the name of the owner, and we usually suggest the admin contact as well.

If that former person decides to be awkward (which happens quite often) it can be difficult to get control of the domain – not impossible, so far we’ve been successful every time – but a pain. [update: we’ve been unable to gain control of .ca domains. We communicated with CIRA, the Canadian registration authority, and the response is that we either need to get the person in who’s name the domain is to turn it over, register an alternate name, or begin a legal dispute process – a not inexpensive process).

Example:

I want a website – www.mywidgets.com

I hire Bob Smith to design it and look after all of that for me. He does, but in the process registers www.mywidgets.com in his name. As long as we have a relationship, everything is fine.

But what if the relationship falls apart, or Bob disappears, or moves on to something else? If I want to move my website to another company I have to go through Bob to do so. If the relationship is bad, Bob can make that difficult, costly, or time consuming.

The bottom line – if you’ve got a domain name, make sure you’re listed on the contact record – most certainly as the registrant, ideally as one of the other contacts as well.

One more thing – Just how much are you paying for your domain name? The most recent client we helped was paying $60 per year for her domain name. We charge $19.99 (.com or .ca) and make a profit (not huge, but a couple of bucks). We charge even less for self serve (.com at www.stwtools.com, .ca through namespro.ca).

Simon