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Domain Management Resources
10 Domain Management Tips:
Critical Management Steps for Small Businesses
As a small business organization, you've invested quite heavily in your Web site and your corporate identity, in the form of your domain name. That's
why it is critical that you take the time to ensure that you are guarding against
the risk of accidentally losing your domain name, or of suffering from a Web
site outage as a result of a problem with the company that you registered your
domain name through.
What can go wrong if you don't manage your domain name?
Over the last few years, there have been a number of problems
that have emerged with domain names:
- domain slamming, i.e. you receive an official
looking renewal notice pertaining to one of your domain names. You learn,
after following out the instructions on the notice, that your domain name
has been transferred to another registrar, and your Web site and e-mail no
longer properly work
- domain blackmail. You fail to renew your domain
name on time, and it is immediately grabbed by a third party. They demand
a sum of money in order to return it to you.
- you don't have backup systems in place, due to an
inadequate infrastructure at the company hosting your domain name
- your domain settings have been hacked, due to inadequate security at the company that hosts your domain
What should you do?
easyDNS, a leading North American domain name management company, offers the following guidance to small business organizations to ensure that you can avoid potential problems with your domain name:
- Become aware of what domains you own, and
where they are registered. Clear up any confusion as to what domains
you actually own, and how and where those domains are registered. If
you are not sure who the registrar is, click on this WHOIS link to
help you find out.
- Move all of your domains to one domain registrar. Don't
use more than one registrar if you have more than one domain! Doing so will
only lead to confusion and increase the likelihood that a problem will occur
if an innocent mistake is made. Using one registrar will make managing your
domain names easier and more straightforward.
- Choose a registrar that supports a registrar lock feature." This
feature will forbid any unauthorized transfers of your domains from one registrar
to another, unless you provide specific permission for the transfer to occur.
This will help to prevent a transfer of your domain occurring as a result
of the most common type of domain slamming that is, responding to an
official, but bogus, domain renewal notice received in the mail.
- Choose a registrar that supports a high level
of security. Make sure that access to your domain is properly restricted,
through a user ID and password that is known only to you.
- Keep all registration information current and under your direct control. Make
sure the same name and contact information is used for all of your domain
registrations. Use an email address that is under your control. DonŐt use
the name of an employee or consultant, but instead, a generic name and e-mail
address (i.e. domain-manager@abc.com) DO NOT use the email address of an
Internet service provider, or a free email service such as Yahoo or Hotmail,
since these latter accounts can expire and become inactive. Monitor on a
regular basis the e-mail address used on the domain registrations, as in
many cases, important correspondence pertaining to renewals and maintenance
will be sent to this account.
- Formulate a domain acquisition, renewal and
expiration policy. Ensure that all new domain registrations are
undertaken with the same registrar used for all of your other domains.
Establish a schedule of domain name expiry dates, so that you can schedule
to renew them in advance.
- Consider renewing your domain for years in
advance. Domains can be renewed for up to ten years in advance
or longer with many registrars. Consider such a renewal for your most
critical domains.
- Reject all correspondence and contact from other domain registrars. Treat
all other domain requests from sources other than your chosen registrar,
(no matter how "official" they appear) as suspicious. Make sure that all staff involved with the Internet and/or domain names in some manner are familiar with the risks of domain slamming and
other unethical methods of business in the domain industry, in order to guard
against risk.
- Ensure you Explicitly DENY any email requests to confirm a domain transfer. If
you receive any message that indicates that someone has initiated a transfer
of one of your domains from one registrar to another, don't simply ignore
the message. In some cases, IGNORING the confirmation request will result
in the transfer proceeding! Instead, do what is necessary to explicitly DENY
the request, and document your actions for later follow-up if necessary.
- Test your domain support. Ensure that you are using a domain registrar that provides effective, critical support when required. If you encounter issues with your critical Internet domains, you want to ensure that you have a partner you can rely upon. As a result, undertake periodic tests of the support provided by your domain registrar, to see if they are as responsive as you would like them to be.
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Q. Do I have to transfer my domain name to easyDNS just to use DNS service?
Q. How many nameservers do you operate?
Q. I need your nameserver information, what is it?
Q. How do I make changes to my DNS information?
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