Archive for the 'Domains' Category

You never know what is going to happen to your site. Servers are temperamental beasts. Here one minute, gone the next in the blink of an eye.

Might be a power outage, virus, an overly enthusiastic developer. There are loads of reasons why your site might suddenly vanish.

You need to make sure you always have a holding page ready for such eventualities. Make sure this page is on a different server because if your server goes down it’ll take the holding page down too.

If your site goes down, forward your domain temporarily to the holding page located on the different server. Forwarding is quicker to implement.

What goes on your holding page? The basic amount of information. Your name, contact information and a brief explanation of why they are seeing this page. Something along the lines of, “We are currently updating our site and hope to be back before the end of the day.”

Of course, set realistic timeframes before you commit to anything. Talk to your hosts first and get a ballpark time frame from them.

And, it goes without saying to NOT use the digging man and “Under construction” emblem

The cardinal rule of the web. Never forget to renew your domain - even if you don’t need it anymore.

Obvious right? Of course it is! But accidents to do happen. Things do get forgotten, especially in big corporations or with small companies around the time the company card is about to be renewed.

Trust me, I know. I have experienced the fall out when domains are not renewed. It’s ugly, and expensive to rectify.

The first example came when I was working for a music brand (who’s name will remain anonymous but they were small and funky) and it was domain renewal time. I reminded the MD who said his IT manager would take care of it. The renewal date came and went and suddenly their site vanished and email stopped working. Then they noticed that where their site had been was a white page with garish flashing text and a text in (h1) format saying, “Domain for sale - sensible offers only.” £5,000 later got them their domain and email back. The IT manager thought the MD was going to renew as the payment details on the card were in the MD’s name. Lesson one: clearly identify responsibility and install a back up plan incase of illness or error.

I still shudder to recount the second example. Politician’s site, set up for all and sundry to pose questions and check his views on various political issues. A previous agency had purchased and managed his domain. When they were inexplicably dropped from the account, they had no particular yearnings to keep a close eye on renewing any domains for him. Renewal came and went and so did his site, only to be replaced a few months later with a Hard Core Porn site. His constituency were horrified to find this upstanding member of the community was associated with such behaviour. It was surprisingly easy to get in touch with the people responsible but very hard to part with the sizable fee it cost to get the domain back. Wonder if he declared that expense to parliament? Lesson two: Renew your domains yourself or if you change agency, change Administration rights on the domain to the new agency.

And finally, why keep a domain you no longer need? Hey, you ever make enemies in your business dealings? You ever attract envy from your competition? You ever attract admiration and desire from others to feed off your name and what you have achieved? Your domain name is a key part of your business and your business success. You wouldn’t leave your premises unlocked? The same counts for your domain, unless of course you are selling up and getting out for good. Then, throw the domain into the deal and add £5,000 to the deal price. Hey, there’s a lot of people who’ll get that for it using far more devious means!