Keeping control of domain names

 

Grabbing a domain name is fairly straightforward with lots of companies offering registration at cheap prices. So many charities have registered a name and may be using it for their website or e-mail.

However, due to staff changes or volunteers moving on, it's easy for an organisation to lose the details of their domain registration. It's quite common for the organisations we help to need a new website, but first ask for someone to help them regain control of their domain name.

Mike Veitch, one of the helpful people at The Helpful Helpdesk, has come across this problem before and posted a few simple rules to the ukriders e-mail list:

  • Step one - Get whois reports for all the domains you think you own.
  • Step two - Check that the owner details are correct - if not amend or change the ownership to the legal owner. (this is the important one)
  • Step three - for .UK domains activate your Nominet account
  • Step four - bring all .UK domains into one Nominet account
  • Step five - find a reliable service provider who allows easy transfer in and when necessary transfer out.
  • Step six - note down all renewal dates with reminders in your diary system.

Ideally these steps should be followed before it all goes wrong so if you're working with a charity to create or update a website you might want to discuss it with them and explain that it could save lots of hassle in the future.