So many clients and business contacts of ours have this problem – and most don’t even realise it.
Do you know where your website lives? Who looks after your domain name? Is it all registered in your name?
Don’t worry if the answer is “erm, not really”. You’re in very good company. Most people never need to think about it, and for most, nothing goes wrong. But when something does go wrong, it’s almost always the people who don’t know where everything is who end up toing and froing for weeks.
Recently, I’ve worked with two clients facing fairly serious problems. Both were unsure where their domains and websites were held. One had a previous web developer who wasn’t particularly helpful when it came to handing over access. The other had several different companies involved, none of which would admit to hosting the website – despite clear evidence to the contrary. We got both sorted, but it took a lot longer than it needed to.
So here’s a quick guide to what all the bits are, how to find them and how to keep them safe.
Your website is a house (bear with us)
You know how people use “domain”, “hosting” and “website” as if they’re the same thing? They’re not, and that’s where most of the confusion starts. It’s easiest to think of it like a house:
- Your domain name is your address. It’s what people type in to find you, like www.epixmedia.co.uk.
- The registrar is who you got the address from. It’s the company your domain name is registered through, and where you renew it each year or two.
- Hosting is the house itself. It’s the space on a computer (a “server”) where your website’s files are kept.
- Your website is everything inside the house. The pages, images and words people see when they visit.
- Nameservers are the directions. They tell the internet which house your address belongs to.
- Your email might live in the house, or somewhere else entirely. Lots of businesses have their email with a completely different company to their website.
The important bit is that these are all separate. You can move house and keep your address. That’s why owning your domain name matters more than anything else on this list.
Three checks you can do in five minutes
1. Who owns your domain?
Go to who.is (http://who.is) and pop in your website address. It’ll tell you who the registrar is – the company your domain is registered through.
You might find the owner’s details say something like “redacted for privacy”. That’s normal – most registrars hide them these days. If so, log in to your account with the registrar, or give them a call, and check whose name it’s in.
If someone else registered your domain for you and it’s not in your name, ask them to update the details. Ideally it should be in your business’s name, with a contact email that isn’t tied to one person who might one day leave. If there’s ever a dispute, having it in your name makes things much easier to resolve.
2. Where’s your website?
The same lookup shows your nameservers – the “directions” from earlier. These often include the name of your hosting company, something like ns1.hostingcompany.co.uk, which tells you where your website is kept.
If you see a name you don’t recognise, don’t worry. Sometimes a service like Cloudflare might sit between your address and your website, filtering out bad or malicious traffic, and so the lookup will show different nameservers to what you’re expecting. It’s worth asking your web developer to point you to the right place.
3. Can you log in?
If you don’t have a login for either of the companies you’ve found, the chances are you’ve asked your web developer to look after everything for you. If that’s not the case, you may have just misplaced the details. Contact the company in question and they’ll usually help you get back in.
What if my web developer hosts my website?
That’s absolutely fine, as long as you trust and get along with them. Some companies will ask you to host with them if your website uses their own software, usually to protect their work from being copied.
We have clients who host with us and others who prefer to have their own hosting accounts. For us, it’s whatever you’re most comfortable with. The one thing we’d always recommend is that the domain name stays in your name, whoever looks after the house.
Three habits that save a lot of headaches
Own your domains
At the very least, make sure your domain names are registered in your name. Even if a company insists you host with them, you can keep your domain on an account you own and “point” it to their hosting. If you have IT support and they look after your emails, keeping a domain with them can be a good idea too.
Keep things in one place (or at least organised)
We often see a business’s domain names (say, their .co.uk and their .com) registered with different companies, their email with another and their website with another again. It usually happens over time, as different people make different decisions. Bringing everything together, or at least knowing exactly where it all is, makes life much easier when you want to update or rebuild your website.
Write it down
If there’s more than one of you, keep a simple central note of:
- Where your domain is registered and when it renews
- Where your website is hosted
- Where your email is managed
- Who to contact at each company
Keep the logins themselves in a password manager rather than in the document, so they stay safe and you’re not stuck when someone’s on holiday.
Five minutes now, not five weeks later
Pop your website address into who.is today, check whose name it’s in, and jot down what you find. It’s a small job that could save you a very big faff. And if anything looks a bit tangled, just ask – untangling this sort of thing is something we do all the time.