"The Desktop Global Marketer" (tm)

   A free on-line newsletter of Sidereal Designs, Inc.,
   for Internet Entrepreneurs, and those who are
   considering becoming one.
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                 March 2000

In this issue: "We continue our series on basic concepts
in web-management with a look at the issues involved in
actually registering your domain name, parking it if you
need to, and moving it if necessary."
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   "The Desktop Global Marketer" is free, and may be 
   re-published freely with permission. We encourage 
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   For any other purpose, please write to:
   	jamie(at)siderealdesigns.com
   Or visit us at:
   	http://siderealdesigns.com
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The Basics II: Registering, Parking, and Moving Painlessly

In this issue we continue our series on basic concepts in
web-management with a look at the issues involved in actually
registering your domain name, parking it if you need to, and
moving it if necessary. Let's start with a look at why you
want to do any of these things.

In the last issue in this series we talked about what a
domain name is, how it's used, and how it relates to your web
site and your hosting service. If you missed that you might
want to look at our archive page:
http://siderealdesigns.com/archive.shtml

We recommended then and we still STRONGLY recommend that you
register any domain name you want right now. It will be gone
soon! But, that said, what if you're not really ready to put
your web site together yet? What if you don't have a hosting
service yet? Well, the answer is that that's one of the
reasons you may want to register a domain, park it somewhere
for a while and then move it to a web-hosting service when
you're ready.

Another complexity that can occur arises if you have a web
site but you want a second domain name to point to it. For
example, either siderealdesigns.com or siderealdesigns.com
(without the dash) will take you to the same page. We wanted
people to get there no matter what so we registered both
names and forwarded one of them to the site registered to
the other.

Or what if you've outgrown the hosting service you're using,
they've gone out of business, or for any other reason you
need to move your site and your domain elsewhere? There are
some pitfalls to avoid at registration time if this is going
to be easy and painless.

It used to be that there was only one way to do this all
anyway, which was to deal with Internic (now Network
Solutions) and they had all the usual customer service
issues of any monopoly, but at least you knew what you were
dealing with. Now there are literally hundreds of registrars
and some of them are truly good people and some of them are
outright crooks. Here is what to avoid:

DON'T pay more than $35/year to anyone to register and/or
park your domain. They are trying to cheat you if you're
paying more than that. We have web-newbies coming in the
door already-registered who have paid hundreds ... and we
have to break the bad news to them. Sometimes they discover
they aren't even the registered owners.

DON'T let a hosting service register it for you unless you
are absolutely certain you are going to host your site with
them. Even if you are, find out the hidden costs and above all
make sure it's registered in YOUR NAME.

(If you're unsure, call us. We'll get you pointed in the
right direction for free. We'd rather do that, even if you
eventually wind up with a different web-design firm, than to
have to straighten it out for you later if you do come to us.)

So what DO you do?

FIRST deal directly with a reputable registrar who charges
standard rates and who will offer all the services you
need. There are a lot of them out there right now as the
industry is shaking out from the new rules. We certainly
aren't familiar with all the new ones. One that we have had
success with and which we are using in all our work is
'register.com' which makes it fairly easy to do the whole
job, and subsequent changes as well, on-line through their
web site. Just go to http://register.com. If you're
techno-phobic, have an independent webmaster handle it for
you.

SECOND understand what you want and don't want. Then make
sure the registrar you choose offers it and isn't charging
you for anything else. Here's what you may want:

1. Registration of your domain name for a period from one to
many years.  This should cost $35/year or less and they
should give you a discount for longer-term registrations. Two
years has been the standard, but many places are now offering
one year registrations and many out to ten years.

2. Parking of your domain name if you need it. If you have a
hosting site already set to go, have your new domain name
pointed to that site. (The hosting service will tell you
what details to give the registrar.) If you don't have a
hosting service yet then have the registrar park it for
you. THIS SHOULD BE FREE. If the registrar doesn't offer
parking and doesn't offer it for free, get another registrar.

3. Domain name forwarding if you need it. If you already
have a web site and you want a second domain name to point
to it, or if you want to start a different web site built
off of your existing site and want a new domain name to
begin at the first page of the different section, then get
domain name forwarding. This should cost no more than
$50/year. For this fee the registrar will point your new
domain name to one of his own domain name servers and
transfer all incoming calls to your existing domain name or
to any sub-page of it. Check with your webmaster how to
specify the URL of the sub-page in this case.

These three things are all the fundamental services you may
need. Many registrars will offer various other additional
services. You may want some of these but be certain you
understand them and compare prices. Don't let anyone tell
you they're required.

CHANGING IT LATER.

This is where things may get difficult if you haven't done it
right to begin with. There may be many reasons why you want
to move your domain from one hosting service to another. For
example you may have decided to expand into e-commerce with
on-line credit card verification and have discovered that
your existing hosting service doesn't offer as attractive a
package as one somewhere else. Hosting services differ
significantly in the kinds of accounts they're targeted
for. Not all fit every purpose.

Whatever the reason, it used to be a considerable hassle in
the old Internic days, principally because of a cumbersome
system of verification (you don't want just anyone
re-pointing your domain name) and partly because it always
seemed to fall through the cracks somehow and require human
intervention. Today things are both better and
worse. They're better because people like register.com have
come up with improved methods of on-line management of
domains, and worse because the unscrupulous have found ways
to try to lock you in to their hosting service.

Here's a scenario to watch out for. Let's say you let
hosting service VVV.NET do your registration for you and
park your name until you're ready to put up a web
site. VVV.NET registers it in your name honestly enough, but
they do it with an obscure bulk-registrar in outer Mongolia
who gives them cut rates and who has minimal interface with
the public, and who requires special passwords to make any
changes. Uh-Oh - only VVV.NET has the password. Now let's go
to work trying to extract it from them so that you can move
your business away from them. Once we get it, let's try to
figure out who to talk to at the registration wholesaler in
Mongolia when something goes wrong with the changeover
process.

By contrast, if you've registered directly with a reputable
registrar who has done a good job of building a user
interface, you will be able to log in at any time to his web
site (not your hosting service's site) and use your
password, which YOU will select at registration, to enter
the new host data directly. If something goes wrong a decent
registrar will have a mechanism in place for you to file a
problem report and they will deal with it expeditiously.

Once a domain is registered it is very difficult and often
impossible to re-think the whole thing, unregister it, and
re-register it somewhere else. Be informed before you act,
deal with a competent registration agency, and if in doubt
get advice from an indpendent expert.

If you're aware of these issues and what you need and what
you should be paying for it, the whole process will be
pleasant and hassle-free and you won't run into nasty
surprises down the road. If you're planning to hire a
webmaster to do your site, by all means contact them BEFORE
you register.

Best,

Jamie



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"Sidereal" is pronounced sy-DEER-ee-all, and means "of
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Sidereal Designs, Inc. "Making The Web Simple."   http://siderealdesigns.com