Controlling domains

Clueless about re-registering domains

[theperlyking]

Up till now I've only ever had my domains registered by the hosting company - the advantages being that I dont have to worry about it much - just pay the bills I get, the disadvantage is that I'm paying probably double what I need to and as I buy more domains over time I realise at some point I should really buy them seperately to save costs.

My question is if I am buying a domain(.co.uk and .coms mostly) from one company and pointing it to my own hosting how do I know when to renew it, who do I renew it with, and I will be paying the same price?

Sorry if these seem stupid questions :)

[Marcia]

theperlyking, I get an advance notification about 5 or 6 weeks prior when it's about to expire. I assume it's the same with all of the registrars.

I can log in to account management and make any necessary changes to contact information, as well as manage the nameserver information and changes.

If I'm changing hosts, I just replace the ns numbers or name, and it resolves to the new IP numbers gradually over the next few days, taking about 72 hours to fully transfer, although I'll generally keep both alive longer, with the full site on both.

I set up a "dummy" page on the new server, and to be honest, have friends on ICQ in different locations let me know if they can see the dummy page, so I'll know pretty closely when it's been resolved in different areas.

I might be moving the domains I look after within the next week, since my site went down in the middle of a crawl, was down almost all weekend, and I received no reply from tech support. In fact, it's still down. I'm not happy.

[theperlyking]

Do you mean the company you registered with give you the advance notification, and therefore renewal is done with them?

Thanks.

[Mike_Mackin]

In most cases you can Per-Reregister with another registration company. At this time it may save you some money.

[theperlyking]

Thanks Mike and Marcia, I think I understand now - I didnt want to start tinkering now and discover I lose out in renewing them ( wow that thought is really scary - imaging losing domains that you have spent time getting links to, good SE results and general popularity).

Marcia, my sympathy - I started looking at new hosts when my provider went down for half an hour - I was lucky it didnt interfere with a crawl but it scared me enough. I now keep my eggs in two baskets and am thinking of co-locating my own server in the distant future.

You know people think that we have an easy job "tinkering with computers" (yep, no matter what I'm doing - to the uninitiated I am just messing round on computers..), but theres as much stress here as anywhere :)

[Marcia]

theperlyking, it's a nameserver problem. I can access by browser and ftp, but it won't resolve. Google was grabbing all the graphics for several days before, so maybe it'll squeeze by, at least there.

I just had a domain expire that had excellent rankings, but not with terms that bring traffic so there's not much loss. It's tempting to pick it up again (it's being held), since it's firmly in Ink (for whatever that's worth) and develop it in another area in addition, plus with other means of promotion specific to its theme within a niche market.

I had no luck getting a nameserver change made with NSI for a client site so I had her change registars. She just paid an additional years registration at a third the price, and it was transferred right over. It took a couple of days to switch, and I had her set up with hosting within an hour, it resolved within 2 days. It was painless, went without a hitch.

Yes, they notify in advance of pending expiration, to the email on record.