Yes, I know I promised Part 2 of Changing web hosting companies next, but Dan Richman of the Seattle P-I asked a series of really good questions (as one would expect from a top-notch reporter) that deserve answers before I continue:
what do you mean by “own my own domain names”? versus “using an ISP’s domain name”?
i thought no one owns domain names — we simply lease them.
could you perhaps get a little more basic?
these postings have the potential to be extremely useful.
I sometimes forget that the Internet is still basically in its infancy, and some of the concepts I take for granted aren’t at all obvious. So let’s start with a brief tutorial on domain names here.
Let’s say my name is Ed Example. I’ve just moved from Seattle to Arizona and signed up with Qwest for high-speed Internet service. I’ve been on AOL for the past few years, but I’m ready to drop my membership.
Qwest is giving me a new e-mail address as part of the service. They also give me a few megabytes of storage where I can create some personal web pages. My email address is example12345@qwest.com, and anyone who wants to see the web pages I created can go to www.qwest.com/~example12345.
So what happens to my old AOL address? I have two choices, neither of which is very appealing:
- I can keep paying AOL a monthly fee of $14.95. I get to keep my e-mail address, and I get five hours of dial-up access which I might or might not use. But I really don’t want to pay $15 a month extra just for e-mail access.
- I can keep my AOL account active for another month or two while I notify everyone I can possibly think of that has my aol.com address. I’ll miss a bunch of people and web sites, I’m sure, but that’s tough. After I cancel my AOL account, any e-mail messages sent to my old address will go into the ether and not to me.
OK, it’s a year later, and now Cox Cable is offering me an irresistible deal on high-speed Internet service. I’m all ready to make the switch, but I’ve got to go through that whole change-of-address dance again. My new e-mail address is example12345@cox.net, and after I cancel my Qwest account any messages that come to that address or my aol.com address will be lost forever. Oh, and I’ll have to make sure to back up my web pages from the personal space at Qwest, too, so I can move them to my new personal web space at www.cox.net/~example12345.
In all of these cases, I was at the mercy of the company providing me my Internet service. They gave me an e-mail account name and some web space, but those were tied to their domains – aol.com, qwest.com, and cox.net. I can only use those addresses as long as I remain a customer. If I switch, I lose my digital identity and have to start all over.
Now, I can work around some of these issues by using free services like Hotmail and Google Mail, but I’m at the mercy of those companies, too. If they change their terms of service or decide to begin charging for what was once free, I have to accept the change or … switch. (How much do business cards and stationery cost? Yikes.)
So, what’s the alternative? Well, if my digital persona is important to me, I can buy my own domain and use it as I see fit. If I buy the example.com domain, I can have my email sent to ed@example.com. I can put up my website at www.example.com and give the whole Example family – even my pets – their own personal addresses: rover@example.com and fluffy@example.com.
So, how do I make this magic happen? It’s a relatively simple process, although the technical details can sometimes get confusing:
- I go to a domain name registrar and check to see whether someone owns the example.com domain. If it’s available, I get out my credit card and pay the going rate to reserve that domain for myself. (Registrations are sold in annual terms)
- I find a web hosting service. I have literally thousands of options, but basically I want a company that will give me space to store web pages, provide me access to incoming and outgoing e-mail servers, and take care of the technical details of making sure that any request sent to my new domain gets handled properly. When my friends go to my website at example.com and click a link, they’re pulling pages off a web server at my new hosting company. When they send email to ed@example.com, the messages go to a server at the same hosting company, which I can access from any Internet connection.
- I fill out a form at my domain name registrar to specify that I want requests for my new domain name to go to the Domain Name System (DNS) servers at my new hosting company. Within a day or so, this change is reflected across the Internet, and anyone who types example.com into a browser gets sent to my hosting company.
How much does this all cost? Ten years ago, I paid Network Solutions $70 a year for my domain name. Today, I pay less than $10 per year for each domain name. Web hosting accounts for personal sites cost anywhere from $3 to $10 per month, usually with discounts for paying annually. You should be able to get a good hosting plan and domain name registration for $60 a year or less. That’s five bucks a month, in exchange for which you get a big chunk of online space for web pages or anything else you want to store, plus the ability to create more e-mail addresses at your domain than most people will ever need.
And now that you’ve paid for your own domain, you own it as long as you keep paying the fees. Your web hosting contract is completely independent of your Internet service provider. If you move or change ISPs, you continue to access the same servers using your own domain name. You don’t have to use the e-mail address your ISP gave you.
And what if you decide to change hosting companies? After you’ve signed the new agreement, just go to your domain name registrar’s site and change the records so that it points to the DNS servers run by your new hosting company. Copy your web pages to the new servers, set up your e-mail accounts, and wait. After a day or so, the change will have worked its way throughout the DNS system on the entire Internet. All your e-mail will come through the new servers – no change of address required – and anyone who visits your web site won’t even know the pages came from a new server.
OK, tutorial over. If you have any questions, post them in the comments and I’ll try to clarify. And I’ll get to Part 2 next!
Ed Bott 
“In all of these cases, I was at the mercy of the company providing me my Internet service.”
What about domain name registrar companies? If the company you registered your domain name with goes out of business, do you lose your name and have to re-register it?
Also, as you said, some companies offer to register your domain name as a part of their hosting package. In that case who actually owns the name? What if I decide to switch my hosting provider? Is there a fine print I should be looking for?
Thanks – looking forward to part 2.
Great explanation Ed!
Ryan, when you register a domain name, it is yours and the registrar is no longer in the picture (besides renewal time). Every year you have to renew your domain name but you can move from registrar to registrar if you like.
Even when your hosting provider registers the domain name for you, it is still yours and you can transfer it to a different registrar when ever you want.
Switching registrars usually means paying for another year, even if the domain is not up for renewal yet.
Great tutorial, Ed! I’d like to have done something like this a couple times now when I’ve been trying to explain things to people, but I don’t have that kind of patience. You are a far better man than I, sir!
Ryan: Domain names and registrars are more “global” than that. Now that registrars are a dime a dozen, it’s not as clear as it was back in the days when Verisign was the only company selling domains. A registrar is like a car dealership: They all sell the same things from a single company with different individual features and at varying prices. They all have to pay the manufacturing company a certain amount, but the rest is up to them.
Regardless of who you register your domain with, the domain is yours and can be moved around at will, just as regardless of the dealership you purchase your Ford at it’s still a Ford and can be serviced at any number of other dealerships.
As far as other fine print in regards to registrars, there’s not a whole lot to it. Registrars like Godaddy offer a number of other features (mostly useless for those who have a hosting plan somewhere else), so it’s just a matter of finding what you need at a price you like. Aside from that, I’ve heard a few bad rumors about registrars shutting down domains for violating their TOS by running a certain type of website on a domain registered through them lately. As with anything, be sure to at least skim the TOS and other applicable policies to make sure they don’t make any outrageous claims.
Oh yeah, and I almost forgot the obligatory Seinfeld reference… “Are you still master of your domain?”
I’m sure Ed will point this out, but Rodney’s statement
isn’t really true.
A great number of hosting companies who “register your domain for you” actually register your name themselves, then let you use it for the duration of your contract with them. Should you wish to move that domain name during the contract, you may find that you can’t without their permission/authorisation. And if the reason you want to move is because your host has ceased operations, or their service has broken down, you may find yourself unable to reclaim your domain name.
Given the negligible cost of a yearly registration, it makes absolutely NO sense to risk control of your domain by accepting registration from your host, even if it’s free. It’s just not worth giving up the control.
Ed, maybe it would be worth mentioning the anonymisation services available when registering a domain for privacy sake, at some point?
Paul
I just the whois for edbott.com and it appears that the domain is in the name of “SecureWhois, Inc.”, not Mr. Bott.
I hope you have a good contract with them.
Bill, SecureWhoIs is a service I pay for that protects my personal information from being made available to anyone (like you) who does a whois lookup.
Just about any domain registrar offers this service for a couple bucks extra. They don’t own or control access to my domain, they just control access to the whois record.
That’s what I mean by “I hope you have a good contract with them.”
Would there be anything stopping them from raising their yearly (?) fees by an unreasonable amount? Will they release the domain on your instruction?
It would be no good trying to transfer the domain to another registry (without their co-operation), because the rest of the network will recognise Secure Whois as the registrant, not you.
Still, the trade-off is that your private address is hidden from creepy people who go about looking at whois records. (Like me.)
Nope, you’re still not getting it, Bill. Secure WhoIs only controls access to the whois record. The fact that they SAY they own the domain when you do a whois lookup doesn’t mean they actually control it. When I go to my domain registrar, I have full control over every aspect of it, directly.
The larger issue you raise is one of trust and business relationships. Any domain registrar could try to screw me out of the domain, but there are procedures that keep them from doing so.
I transferred a domain I inherited from Network Solutions to my webhost Doteasy that will do the registrar stuff for you (and it was also where I moved the domain). Network Solutions (to me at least) always makes like you will be sleeping with the fishes if you don’t do your registering stuff through them. Doteasy are more laid back in their approach. Take the privitization of your Whois info. NS wanted to charge a fee for it. I asked DE if they were going to do the same thing, and they will do the same thing… for free.
Sorry I missed out on your post on looking for webhosts, I would have recommended Doteasy to you.
My university alumni assoc provides an email forwarding service that is nice. All my friends have that email and no matter where I move, the email reaches me. I just have to enter the new email address for the news hosting service at my university web site and after that the mail goes to me@alumni.university.edu
Great overview, Ed… I just wanted to clear up one opoint in your earlier post. TypePad has always supported using your own personal domain name for your blog so you’ve got complete flexibility in the address that your website lives at. We completely agree that people for whom a website is part of their identity should be able to easily control their URLs.
Great article! I don’t know why I never thought of that idea for my own “personal” e-mail and websites. I’ve been using yahoo and hotmail for that! I guess for personal site with email, the feature to look at would be the e-mail program, not just the web space.
Any out there that resemble Outlook?
Susan, the web hosting company will provide you with a number of POP3 e-mail accounts — all linked to your domain — which should be compatible with any POP3 client software (such as Microsoft’s Outlook). Of course, you are responsible for providing the latter.
I was wondering, if i create a domain name through some sort of registrar do they have any rights if I sell the name to someone?
Derek says:
I was wondering, if i create a domain name through some sort of registrar do they have any rights if I sell the name to someone?
Posted October 15, 2006 @ 6:27 pm
No Thay Dont Derek
By Internat Law In Any Contry It Is agenst The Internet Or Real Life Law For Any Or All Registrers To Forbid Thare Clients From Doing Anything With Thare Own Domain
Thare Clients Have Full And Apsalut Controle of The Domain That Thay Registerd
Ther Registrer Only Registers The Domain On The Clients Beharf Meaning It Is The Client Who Has Full Controle