It’s really important to know where your website is and who is managing it. Most of you probably won’t ever have a major issue related to your website hosting, but those that do tend to be those that are unaware of where everything is. Recently I have had two clients with fairly serious issues that we’ve managed to resolve. Both were unsure where their domains and websites were being held; one had a previous web developer that wasn’t particularly helpful when it came to getting our hands on what we needed and the other had a handful of company names and none would admit to hosting their website, despite what the evidence said!

Below I’ve outlined some quick checks you can do yourselves to make sure you know where everything is. I’ve also added some tips to make the management of your website a little bit easier. The details of owning a website can get quite complex, I’ve tried my best to keep it simple!

If your unsure what any of the terms I’ve used below mean, I’ve added very brief descriptions at the bottom of this post.

Quick Checks

Is my domain registered in my name?

Whois is a directory that holds information about all domain names (webite addresses). It’s really simple to check who owns a domain, just go to who.is and enter your website address. It will also tell you who the Registrar is (the company the domain name was registered through).

If someone else registered your domain name for you and it is not registered in your name according the Whois directory, ask this person to change the registration details. If you have any issues with ownership of your website, providing the domain is in your name they can normally be resolved (even if you don’t have direct access to the domain name).

Where’s my website?

The Whois directory also gives you information about the name servers. These can be used to identify where the website itself is being kept. For example our website’s name servers are “…1and1.co.uk” which tells you our website is on a 1and1 website hosting account.

I don’t have a login for my website or domain names…

If you don’t have a login for your website or domain names with either of the companies identified above (using the registrar and name server information) the chances are you’ve asked your web developer to host everything for you. If that’s not the case, you may just have misplaced the details – contact the company(s) in question and they will usually help you get access.

My website is with my web developer on their private hosting

This is absolutely fine providing you trust and get along with them. Some companies will require you to host with them if you are using their own software within your website and this is usually to help prevent copyright infringement. We have clients that host with us and others that prefer to have their own accounts; for us it’s whatever the client is most comfortable with.

Tips

Own your domains

At the very least, make sure your domain names are registered in your name. If a company insists that you host with them against your wishes, you can still keep your domain names on an account owned by you and “point” the domain name to their hosting account where your website is.

Keep everything in one place

Some clients seem to like to register domain names with multiple different companies, have email accounts elsewhere and their website somewhere else… usually though a lack of awareness or communication between colleagues. Keeping everything on one hosting account makes life so much easier when you come to have a new website built, whether that’s with your developer or on an account of your own.

Document it

If you have multiple team members keep a central document containing all relevant contact details that explains where everything is. This is something we do for our larger clients, usually after having gone through most of the process above. Once we get everything organised we create a list of where everything is with the contact details of their account managers within the relevant companies.

Over the next month or so I’ll also be covering what to do if your website is stolen or duplicated and the new laws around cookies (not the biscuit kind)!!

Term Reference

Domain name: this is your website address, for example ours is www.epixmedia.co.uk

Website: these are the files/pages people see when they go to your domain name.

Hosting: this is the place your website files are kept. You can also usually keep your domain names and email accounts on your “Hosting” account.

Name servers: Your hosting account is kept on a server somewhere, the “name servers” section on the Whois directory shows you the address of that server. This can help you identify where your website files are being kept.

Whois: A directory containing information on the registration of domain names.

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Now you can just drop in to The Showroom’s iCafe on Tritton Road in Lincoln from 2pm – 4pm on the second Wednesday of every month and we’ll be there to lend a hand. Bring your tech along and any details or passwords we may need to help you resolve the issue.

The service is completely free and we’ll aim to spend 10-15 minutes helping you answer your tech questions, and if we can’t help we’ll at least be able to advise on what to do next!

Next dates: TBC

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He joined fellow Mo Bro’s as part of the Lincoln Business Club team who are quickly raising funds. Will has been updating his Mo space every day so be sure to log-on to watch his progress at http://mobro.co/epix

You can donate online and all donations to the team or individuals will be gratefully received!

http://mobro.co/LBC

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1. It’s Free

WordPress is free! You can even host it for free with a wordpress.com domain (ie http://yourname.wordpress.com) though their hosting is rather restrictive. You can also host your wordpress site with your web developer or other hosting companies such as 1and1 or godaddy. Be sure to check that the host supports wordpress before signing up for anything.

It has the potential to be absolutely 100% free if you also make use of a free theme (more below) and have a bit of time to invest in finding your way around. However doing this has its downsides and to really make the most of it we would recommend you at least have a chat with your developer!

2. The easy-to-use admin

Adding new website pages and blog posts is simple – WordPress has a visual editor and allows you to manage images and galleries.

You can also manage your website menus and navigation if you want, plus WordPress has a whole heap of more advanced features if your feeling adventurous!

3. Free & custom themes

WordPress has thousands of free or low cost themes available on hundreds of libraries across the internet. These themes are a financially viable way to give your site a design and some of the themes that sell for a small fee have some great features too, however using one of these can take some uniqueness away from your website and brand.

A way around this is to have a custom theme built, as this means your WordPress site can be designed by a designer and hand-coded just like any other site. This is really what makes WordPress so wonderful – its ability to be completely customisable whilst still giving you full control. See some of our custom themes built for clients here.

There is a third option too, and that’s to have an existing theme edited, and customise it to fit your brand. A good example of this is the lincolnshireweddingfayre.co.uk website.

4. Simple set up

Setting up WordPress is simple, especially on WordPress’ own hosting or other web hosts that have WordPress built in. If you prefer some help, a developer can set up your WordPress site and install a free theme in a few hours.

There’s nothing to install on your computer either. It’s all hosted online and you can access your WordPress admin from almost anywhere with a computer and an Internet connection.

5. Expandability

WordPress really is a fantastic platform for your small-medium business’ website. Not only can you control everything on it from the admin but there are plugins for almost anything you can imagine. If you decide you want to sell a few products online there are ecommerce plugins, if you want to sell or giveaway tickets to your workshops, just add an events calendar with the required functionality – there are so many out there. WordPress really can grow with your business.

So, there’s plenty of reasons we think you should be using WordPress! If you want to find out more – contact us!

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We had some great speakers, over 100 delegates and raised over £500 for The Showroom’s youth charity at June’s tweet meet. It was so successfully that rather than holding the event yearly as planned we are having another one just 6 months later on the 7th December 2011.

We’ll have 3 more fantastic speakers for you and we’re also allowing more space so we can fit more people in at The Showroom. Registration is now open and in just a week after releasing the date on twitter alone we have had over 100 delegates register for the free event.

Click here to register whilst spaces are still available.

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She has also created their new website which is a mixture of WordPress and custom code. The new website allows members to register online and login and update their information when they need to. Along side this is a new members directory with plenty of search and sort functionality to make connecting with other local business faster and more simple.

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