Wiley Website Design and Development: 100 Questions to Ask Before Building a Website 978-0-470-88952-7 User Manual
Product codes
978-0-470-88952-7
5 . W H O W I L L R EG I S T E R YO U R D O M A I N A N D I N W H O S E N A M E ?
11
5. Who Will Register Your
Domain and in Whose Name?
Domain and in Whose Name?
Although registering a domain name is straightforward, some people
are not comfortable doing it themselves or they’re too busy, so it’s not
uncommon for a web designer or a company to register a domain on
behalf of their client. If that’s how you’re having your domain name
registered, there are several steps you’ll want to take to make sure that
the domain remains under your control.
At the very least, you should be listed as the registrant: Use your
mailing information, your e-mail address, and so on. The registrant is
the one who controls the domain name. There are three other contacts
for a domain name: administrative, technical, and billing. Usually all
four contacts are the same, but it can be useful to have the person or
company helping you listed as the technical contact. That way they
have authority to talk to the registrar if there are technical issues to be
resolved. The key is that you be listed as the registrant.
Of all the information listed for you as registrant, the most impor-
tant is your e-mail address. It’s used for a number of crucial tasks:
Notifying you of the domain’s expiration date
Q
Sending approval requests should you want to transfer to
Q
another domain registrar
Sending password information should you ever lose your
Q
password
Once the domain name has been confi gured so that it’s pointing to
your server and your website is functional, you should change the pass-
word for the domain manager. You can always supply the designer or
company with this new information should they later need to help you
with the domain name. What you don’t want is to discover a year later
that some former employee still has access to your domain and goes in
and changes the registrant e-mail and password, thereby taking control
of the domain.
If you’ve had a domain name registered, but you don’t have any of
the login information for the domain, do what’s called a whois search at
Importance
On Video
Watch how you can
register a domain name
yourself.
It’s a good idea for
your contact e-mail not
to be the same as your
domain name. If your
domain name expired,
any communication
from the domain reg-
istrar would no longer
work. Be careful about
using an e-mail address
from your ISP—if you
change ISPs or move,
be sure to update your
contact e-mail address
for your domain name.
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