Taking control of my domain names

How do I do this?

[Nick_W]

Hi
To my embarassment I'm a complet novice with domain names. I have several registered through easily.co.uk

I would like to take control of them myself to avoid the high fees on this service.

Could someone please give me the basics on how to go about doing this?

Many thanks

Nick

[Crazy_Fool]

if you don't have the money to get your own nominet tag and your own opensrs account, open an account with ukreg.com or 123reg.co.uk and transfer all your domains there. ukreg support is poor, but they should do what you need in the way of DNS control and low costs.

[Nick_W]

Can't I just deal directly with joker or whoever the registra is?

Nick

[fathom]

Hi Nick_W,

I'm not sure what you are asking?

If you want to transfer domains and IP's for you to minimize hosting fees - this can be substantially more expensive.

If you want to transfer to another existing service all you need to do is contact technical support of the registra and request a DNS transfer to your new service.

You will need to provide them the DNS addresses of your new service.

This can usually occur in less than 24 hours.

[Nick_W]

Thanks. what I'm actually trying to do is to extend them. they are all about to expire.

But easily.co.uk is very expensive.

Could I just tell the registra that I want to extend them? The technical contact on my sites is easily (whois on site in profile) so I'm a bit worried that if I want to extend them I'm stuck with easily?

Nick

[fathom]

I see....

Well you must paid your original registra, if these domain name have already expired, or you can go to a new registra and quote a price but this can be more expensive.

You can also wait 90 days (or longer) for the registra to drop the domain.

If the domain is currently active you can contact any of Crazy_Fool suggested registra's and once this is arranged, they will (with your consent) contact your old registra for the DNS transfer.

NOTE: Registra's don't make alot of money per client (or domain) so retaining control is very important to them. They generally don't like a transfer and make the process somewhat confusing to deter transfers.

[Nick_W]

Right. Thanks everyone ;-)

Nick

[Crazy_Fool]

you need to go to ukreg.com and open an account. in the control panel, you enter the domain you want to transfer and click the submit button. the admin contact for the domain (presumably you) will get an email asking if they want to transfer the domain. by following the instructions to confirm this, you can transfer all domains into the ukreg system. each domain you transfer must be renewed by 12 months at the time of transfer, renewals being at lower rates than for easily.

if your domains are due to expire within the next 40 or 60 days (or whatever it says on ukreg) then you won't be allowed to transfer them and you will have to renew them with easily. once renewed you will be unable to transfer them away for 40 or 60 days. i can never remember whether it's 40 days prior and 60 days following renewal, or the other way round, but it's something like that.

[Woz]

>You can also wait 90 days (or longer) for the registra to drop the domain.

If the domains are impportant to you I would advise against letting them drop with the intention of re-registering them with another registrar. Even though you may think that no-one else would want your domain you never know. Many people have lost domains this way, including me! Having learned my lesson I won't let it happen again.

I suggest that if the domains are close to expiring, and if you want to keep htem, then you should simply bite the bullet and pay whatever fees are necessary with your current registrar and then when the dust dies down, look into transferring them to another registrar.

Onya
Woz

[shanz]

small rant

>>>NOTE: ..retaining control is very important to them. They generally don't like a transfer and make the process somewhat confusing to deter transfers.

small understatement perhaps!

In britain a lot of technically incompetent registrars charge a lot of money to control your domain and then do it through a third party. Try discovering this third party and going direct to them. As the legal owner of the domain you can transfer them out from there. I saved over £1000 doing this and boy were the registrar company mad. Hee Hee. :)

[Nick_W]

Ok guys, anyone give me any clear idea of whether htat is possible with this:

[whois.crsnic.net]
Whois Server Version 1.3
Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
 Domain Name: [b]my domain[/b]
 Registrar: CORE INTERNET COUNCIL OF REGISTRARS
 Whois Server: whois.corenic.net
 Referral URL: http://www.corenic.net
 Name Server: NS.LEVONLINE.COM
 Name Server: NS2.LEVONLINE.COM
 Updated Date: 18-apr-2002
>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 04:49:12 EDT <<<
The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU domains and
Registrars.
[whois.corenic.net]
 Nick Wilson (template COCO-684617)
 [b]email address and adress[/b]
 Domain Name: [b]my domain[/b]
 Status:  production
 Admin Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
  Steve Procter (COCO-21639) [e-mail]
  [phone] (FAX) [phone]
 CORE Registrar: CORE-11
 Record last modified: 2002-04-18 14:41:34 UTC by CORE-11
 Record created:  2000-08-20 16:31:29 UTC by CORE-11
 Record expires:  2002-08-20 11:38:29 UTC
 Domain servers in listed order:
 ns.levonline.com 
 ns2.levonline.com 
 Database last updated on 2002-06-18 10:31:14 UTC

Many thanks for all the advice ;)

[shanz]

The problem here as I see it is that the admin contact is the company that registered the domain for you. In some cases you can change this by sending a headed fax to the registrar stating that you are the legal owner of the domain and you would like the Admin Contact changed to yourself. Unfortunately some companies just ignore you. So chase this up.
It looks like the Domain name servers belong to the company, at least there is nothing useful there so you might be stuck on this one.

[incywincy]

nick,

do you really consider £10 expensive for a 2 year renewal of a .co.uk domain? maybe i'm out of touch with domain name costs.

i've used easily for a few years now and though they're not the cheapest their support is good and they're only a quid or so dearer than a lot of their competitors.

sometimes it just isn't worth the hassle of transferring out.

[Nick_W]

They are .coms and they're a fair bit dearer than .co.uk's

Nick

[DaveN]

Nick

transfer them to godday it will cost you 1 years renewal fee about $9

DaveN

[ritch_b]

From experience, joker are notoriously fickle when it comes to either changing the owner contact, or performing an intra-registrar transfer.

During our last dealings with them, where we transferred to domain to another registrar, the "confirm transfer" e-mails were actually sent to the person listed as the OWNER contact, not the ADMIN contact as should normally be the case.

Find a registrar who will handle the transfer of a domain from Joker - a number of registrars will only transfer from NetSol - and initiate the transfer. You'll need to inform Easily that you're transferring and get them to approve the request. The process could take around five weeks from past dealings, but as the domains have a couple of months before expiry, this shouldn't present a problem.

Then sit back & enjoy the delights of self-administration...

[Nick_W]

Okay rich, when you say self administration what exactly do you mean? I still have to go through a company like easily do I not?

Nick

[ritch_b]

Unless you're planning on registering a really large number of domain names, you will still end up having to deal with at least one company such as Easily.

By becoming the admin contact, you take control over the entire record for that domain name, so, if you want to transfer again in the future, the confirming e-mails come straight to you - no middleman. If you want to change the nameserver details, you can. Amendments you make are generally done on-line and without the need to telephone somebody, send faxes and so on.

If you're unsure about your requirements, I'd agree with Crazy_Fool and be tempted to go with somebody such as ukreg. With them, you maintain control over the domain, but get other features such as mail forwarding and web-diversion, which may be of use to you.

[Crazy_Fool]

nick
if you don't want to use another company like easily / ukreg / joker etc, you will need to open an account with someone like opensrs. this will put you at the same level in the "domain selling chain" as easily / ukreg / joker etc. you have to pay $250 up front for domain registrations, and you are given code to set up your own domain registration system. you will need your own server to install additional perl modules. domains then cost you about $10 each per year - you'll have to check on the actual cost.

you can go one better and join the "domain registration chain" at the next level up - the same level as opensrs and other major (bulk) providers. i'm not rich enough to afford that level of membership so can't really tell you any more about it. probably best if you look around the ICANN site.

but if you just want to save a bit of money, use ukreg or another similar company.