Domain Registrars and Domain Names

To operate a website, you need a domain name. When you own a domain name, you can set it up to forward web and email requests to go wherever you want. That allows you to choose your hosting provider.

Any business with an online presence should own and manage its own domain names.

Why You Need to Manage Your Own Domains
Whoever registers a domain owns the domain. If you invest in building a web presence on a certain domain name, it will have some value. If you don’t own the domain, someone else can take the value away from you. Or charge you a fee to get access.

If someone else owns a domain, it can be a hassle to get it transferred to your name even if they are co-operative. If they don’t want to co-operate, legal action action may be your only recourse. Wanting it isn’t enough, you need legal grounds - for example, if they have used your trademark, or under certain rules for country specific domains. But you want to avoid that if you can.

Since it is easy to register you own domain names in the first case, you need to get over any reluctance and figure out how to do this.

How Domains Work

You purchase a Domain Name from a Domain Registrar for an annual fee, and continue to renew the domain for as long as you want to keep it.

When you own a domain, you get to specify the Name Servers that determine where traffic goes for that domain. You set the name servers according to where you choose to host your website and email for your domain.

Add ons such as hosting and email forwarding are separate decisions to buying a domain. Many domain registrars offer fee based add ons as well as domains, and their marketing pitch may blur them all together. Once you buy a domain, you don’t have to buy any other services to get a website up and running or to setup email accounts. If you use an OM4 community website, your hosting and email doesn’t cost anything.

Choosing a Domain Name

If you haven’t chosen a domain name yet, read Choosing Domain Names to help you choose. In a nutshell, choose .com domains that are short, memorable and without hyphens. Including keywords helps you rank for related searches. A balancing act to be sure.

Choosing a Domain Registrar

If you don’t have an account with a Domain Name Registrar yet, you need to set one up. You setup an account with a registrar when you buy your first domain name with them.

A good domain name registrar is an important business partner for you. Some issues to consider:

Price. Some registrars charge a lot more than others. $10/domain vs $60/domain matters if you are going to purchase a lot of domains, less so if only one.
Self Service. Some registrars have great self-service facilities, which let you manage your domain without having to get a human involved. Specifically, you want to be able to update your name servers, renew your domain and get your domain Auth Code / EPP Code (so you can transfer it elsewhere) via self service.
Support. You don’t want to have to try and get support for something worth $10/yr. Good support is vital if you can’t get self-service, but you want self-service so support isn’t required.
Multiple Domains. If you have more than a few domains, you will want one login for all your domains. Not a separate login for each domain.

The registrars we currently use and recommend are:

WebCity Domains - for both .com.au and .com/.net etc domains. Cost around $15/yr for a .com.au
NameCheap - for .com/.net etc domains. Cost around $10/yr for a .com

Other than using them ourselves, we don’t have a commercial relationship with either of these registrars.

Registering a Domain Name

This is the easy part. Once you have an account with a domain registrar:

search for the name to see if it is available
register it for one or more years - just pay for the domain itself, no add ons
set the name servers (see below)

Would You Like Fries With That?
You don’t have to pay anything more than the fee for the domain name. So you can safely ignore offers for add ons such as hosting, forwarding, email forwarding, DNS services, other services. Some registrars make their add on offers very much in your face, and it can make it a bit tricky to avoid them. Persevere and you will find you can just pay for the domain without any add ons, all you need is the domain name and to be able to set your name servers.

Setting Name Servers

Each domain has one or more name servers assigned that control where requests for web or email are sent to.

To send web and email traffic to the OM4 hosting service, set your name servers to:

ns1.om4hub.com
ns2.om4hub.com

Check your name servers are correct by going to Pingability and doing a Domain Check.

Renewing a Domain Name

A good domain registrar will send you a reminder when your domain is due for renewal.

But you need to keep an eye on this. If the renewal notice gets into the Junk Mail folder and you miss your renewal, you could lose your domain.

Expiring domains are advertised on the Internet and domainers can swoop in and buy your domain as soon as it becomes available. After that you have no recourse.

Given it doesn’t cost a lot, you may want to pay for multiple years up front.

Transferring a Domain Name

If someone else has registered a domain name for you, you should ask for the password for the domain so you can transfer it into your own name. The password is variously called an Auth Code or an EPP Code.

You should first ask for the code from the person who registered it for you. If they can’t or won’t give you the Auth Code / EPP Code, then if the domain is registered in your name then you can possibly contact the domain registrar of the domain and ask them to either give you the code, or give you access to a login so you can get the the code yourself.

Once you have the EPP Code / Auth Key, you can go to your own domain registrar and use their facility to transfer a domain. Sometimes you may pay for another year (which is added on to the current expiry date), sometimes you just get a transfer.

A word of warning: domain registrars have a habit of playing dead or pretending to misunderstand your request when it comes to giving out Auth Codes / EPP Codes. They think that by making it hard to transfer a domain away from them, they are helping their business. Personally, if a domain registrar causes problems with transfers, I go looking for a better registrar. If they will intentionally cause you grief over a small matter, they will probably cause you a lot more grief later on. There are several domain registrars we no longer recommend because of their behavior over domain transfers.

You can’t transfer a domain less than 60 days after it is registered, or less than 7 days before it expires.