Are You Sure You Own Your Kansas City Business Web Site? It’s Easy To Find Out.

OK, three simple questions.

1. Do you know 100 percent, for sure, that you own your business’s Kansas City website name?

2. Did you know that there are two parts to every website? (1) Domain and (2) Hosting? Did you know they are separate things with their own passwords?

3. Can you walk away from your current Kansas City Web designer at 8 am, and within 5 minutes, can another Kansas City Web designer be working on your current website for you?

If you’ve answered “No”, “I don’t know” ,or “I’m not sure” to any of these three questions, then I implore you to please read the rest of this blog post so you can immediately protect your business’s Internet presence.

Answer to question 1 above. Do you know 100 percent, for sure, that you own your business website name?

There are so many different aspects to this question, but the most important is the picture above.

In the picture above, there are four contact areas associated with a “Domain” name. (example…kcwebspecialists.com)

• Registrant
• Administrator
• Technical
• Billing

Without fail, the absolutely most important thing you can do for your business is to make sure the Registrant and Administrator information is for you, the business owner. Make sure the email address is current. The people who provide domain names to the world (ICANN) determine who owns a domain through this information.   Make sure the Registrant and Administrator information is the same.

Go here to check who’s name is registered with your domain. 

Answer to question 2 above. Did you know that there are two parts to every website? (1) Domain and (2) Hosting? Did you know they are separate things with their own passwords?

A website is made up of two separate parts. 1. The domain name, and 2. hosting. The picture above comes from the screen that controls the registration of your domain name (So item 1, the domain name).

Do you have the username and password to get to the screen to change the contact information for your domain name? If not, get it today!

As the business owner, not only should your name be the Registrant and Administrator contract information, but you MUST have the ability to log in and change this information whenever you want.

However, you may feel that…

• You would never do this change stuff yourself.
• You may completely trust your website development company.

Regardless of how you feel, at least make sure you have the login and password information to get in and change the domain contacts if you have to. Have it written down, locked up, and stored in a safe location somewhere under your control.

A bit about hosting.  Hosting is nothing more than renting server space to put your website files on.  A website is a collection of files all working together for people to view on the Internet.  Hosting is separate from domain registration. Hosting has its own login and password.

Hosting may or may not be with the same company that your domain is registered with.

Know exactly where and how your website is hosted. Do you have complete control of your website hosting, or is your Website company hosting your Website for you?

Answer to question 3 above. Can you walk away from your current Web designer at 8 am, and within 5 minutes, can another Web designer be working on your current Web site for you?

This can be by far the most expensive aspect of owning your website.

Here’s a true story……It’s 8 in the morning, and you want a difficult change made to your website. You contact your Web designer, and they don’t return your calls. You email them, you call them, it’s now going on a week later, and you still don’t hear back from them.  

Finally, you reach them, and they say they won’t work on your site till you get current on your bill. Words are said, frustration runs a bit high, and you decide to fire them.  You Google around and find another Web company in town that you want to use. The new company tells you they need the hosting login and password information for your website.  The old company says they can’t give out that information because the site is actually hosted on their server, and they don’t want the other Web company to have access to it.  

It’s now going on two weeks.  After much threatening, you manage to get the old Web company to give you a copy of your Web site on a CD. But then you notice your website is down.  The old company says, Well, you didn’t want to host with us anymore, so we turned off the site. But hey, we gave you the site on a disk, so it shouldn’t take you too long to get your new Web company to get the site back up for you.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

OK, folks, this happens all the time. Protect your business….

Make sure your website is hosted on a national hosting company in your name.  (GoDaddy, Host Gator, BlueHost, Network Solutions, etc. There are dozens of them out there. Host your site with a company that is never going away, and in a place where you have complete access/control of the hosting.   You can share the login/password with your website designer, but always keep the hosting account in your name and in your control.

Finally, do you get emails from a company called ICANN?

DON’T DELETE THOSE EMAILS!!!

Forward those emails to us at support@kcwebspecialists.com

ICANN is the world governing body that controls domain names. That email just asks you to confirm that the Registrar information associated with your domain name is correct.  If you ignore these emails, you may find yourself locked out of a website and your emails.

I got the following email from Mike Hill at MicroNetKC. It explains the issue.

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We have recently run across an unsettling development concerning domain registrations.  Domain registrations are what allow your business to have an internet website and email, such as micronetkc.com.  We have discovered that ICANN, an organization that helps govern internet domains, is requiring every domain to be validated by the owner.  This is a very simple thing to do, but it also has a devastating impact on your business if you do not validate your domain.

Last week, we had a client who lost the ability to receive email, and their website went down.  In investigating this issue, we found that it was because the domain registrar, such as GoDaddy or Network Solutions, shut down their domain.  Here’s what happened:

The registrar sent an email to the email on file for that domain.  That email had a link within it to validate the domain.  A simple click and done, easy right?  Yes, as long as you got the email and performed the simple click.  In this case, the email on file with the registrar was for someone not in the company any longer.  The email was never received; actually, there was a series of emails…none received.  Thirty days later, the domain was put on hold.  That locked everything.  No inbound email and no website.  Any other services they had relying upon their domain also failed.

I’m sending you this email so that you can be aware of the potential impact on your business, and for you not to ignore a request from your domain registrar to validate your information for ICANN.  I do not know the timeline for the validation, as it seems that they are not sending out notifications for everyone all at once.  I envision them having a staggered schedule to make this happen.

I recommend you log in to your domain registrar and ensure you have your current email in there for your contact information.  If you would like some help with this, please send an email to support@micronetkc.com, and a ticket will be opened so we can help you out.  If you have already received the email…better get to clicking that validation link!

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This blog post by:

By Chris Nastav

Author Chris Nastav

By KC Web Specialists

Author KC Web Specialists