The Essential Domain To-Do List: Don’t Lose Your Domain Name (Again)
When you register your first domain name, you’ll see how easy it is and it’s only the question of time before you head back to your registrar and get another one. And another one. And just this last one. Suddenly, you’ll have a portfolio of several dozens of domain names registered which need some maintaining. What do you do?
By now, you all know what a domain name is and how to get one. Just to make sure; domain names are essentially the names, the addresses of your web sites which help your visitors remember a simple, short name that is easy to remember instead of a bunch of numbers that represent the IP address.
All in One Basket
First of all, the best thing to do when registering a domain name is to register it with the same registrar. Keep them all in one basket, even though that wouldn’t be recommended for other things like money etc. Having all of your domain names in one place is more practical and makes it easier for you to manage them all at once.
Your domain registrar probably has some kind of a control panel – dashboard where you can manage all of your domains. In it you can see all of the basic domain name information like expiration date, renewal options, privacy setting etc. If your domains are spread out across several registrars, it would be good to get them all into one place – you’ll have to migrate your domains to a single registrar, which is something we’ll talk about soon.
Need Some Privacy?
Domain names are registered to a person or a company. That data is publicly available and if you know how to use Google, you’ll know how to use a DNS search engine like DNSgoodies.com. Those DNS records are instantly available for everyone to see, which might be a problem sometimes. If you registered a domain name and you don’t want your information to be involved with it, you should t get a private registration.
Private domain registration is a service only several registrars provide and you should be careful with it. Basically, you’ll register your domain name under their account which means that some 3rd party company could be the actual owner of the domain.
Lock It!
There are a number of ways to get a domain name transferred to another registrar. However, if you want to make sure none of them are transferred by accident, you should lock them. Locking the domain name makes it impossible to transfer it to another registrar, even if the domain owner wants to initiate it. If a locked domain name needs to be moved, you’ll have to unlock it first.
Auto-Renewal
When domain names expire, you still have some time to take action and renew your domain names before they become free for trading or even worse – deleted from the DNS system. The problem with manual renewal is that no matter how much email notifications your registrar sends, you’ll forget to renew your domains.
Set up automatic renewal and let the system do the boring work – on the date of domain expiry, your credit card will be charged for another year and your domain will stay in your possession.
Did we miss something? What would you recommend for domain owners?
