If you own a small business there’s a good chance that you have a website that you use to advertise and promote your business services. As such, you probably already know who your web designer is and already have a good working relationship with that person. You may not however know who is hosting your website or who your registrant is. Not knowing this information could result in your website becoming unavailable or worse yet, your website could even expire without your knowledge and someone else could legally buy it from right under your nose!

I have dealt with clients who all too often have no idea as to who is hosting their website and with what registrant they used to purchase their domain name. In a best case scenario all I have to do is use a free WHOIS tool such as Whois.Net to determine the domain registrant and web host. I then have to take the time and help the customer to reset their usernames and passwords to these services. I charge a reasonable fee and everyone is happy. I have had other cases however where a customer calls complaining that their website is down only to discover that the actual reason for the outage is because they no longer (or never actually did) own the site!  In one scenario a business’ website actually was registered by an employee who became disgruntled and quit without notice. As if this weren’t bad enough, especially during the busy summer tourist season in the Berkshires, the ex-employee actually took the website offline and refused to give it back to the business owner! Since the business owner never actually owned the site in the first place, they didn’t have much of a leg to stand on and a lawyer had to get involved! I’m going to help make sure that this never happens to you, but first and foremost you should have a basic understanding of the terms registrant, web host, and web designer. See below for a brief overview of these terms;

Registrant - The company (such as Go Daddy.com) that you used to register your domain name. The registrant also stores critical information about your website’s DNS servers and mail server settings which are referred to as MX records. A registrant may also offer web hosting services.

Web host - The company that is performing the function of making your website available on the Internet via use of a web server. A web host doesn’t necessarily have to be the same company as your registrant.

Web designer - The individual or group of individuals that build and maintain your website. Your web designer may or may not work for the same company that hosts your website.

As a business owner it is critical that you have a complete understanding of all records, licenses, etc that are required in order to run your business. This includes having records of and access to all of the pertinent information regarding your website! Having this information will help to ensure that your website will never experience an outage due to an unpaid hosting fee or expired domain. If you’re a restaurant owner I bet that you wouldn’t let your liquor license lapse, right?

If you don’t have accurate records regarding the web hosting and registration status of your website here are the steps that you should take to obtain this information.

Step 1. Contact your web designer

Your first step should be to contact your web designer and see if he or she has record of this information. Your web designer will most likely have information regarding your web hosting company as the web designer needs to login in order to update your website. Your web designer may not however have information regarding your registrant UNLESS your web designer was the individual who actually performed the task of configuring your website’s DNS servers and MX records. Let me be very frank by stating that it is not your web designer’s fault if they cannot provide you with information regarding your registrant. It is YOUR responsibility as the business owner to know who your registrant is and what the registration status of your domain is.

Step 2. Use Whois.Net to find out who your registrant is

If your web designer doesn’t know who your registrant is then you can use Whois.Net in order to find out this information. Simply head on over to Whois.Net and enter the name of your website. Click Go to see the results of your WHOIS search.

As you can see, a WHOIS search will give you information regarding your domain registrant.

Now that you know who your registrant is, you’ll want to head over to their website and follow the registrant’s procedures for resetting your username and password. Once you’ve logged in, make sure that all of your contact information that you originally provided to your registrant is up to date. You should also take this opportunity to make sure that your domain isn’t going to expire anytime soon. If it is, make sure that you renew your website immediately and set your site to auto-renew.

3. What if my domain has already expired?

I have seen this happen in instances where a person opens a business and then purchases a website that they’ll use “someday.” The new business is going well so the business owner never gets around to having their website developed. The registration period lapses without the business owner even realizing it until they finally decide to have their website designed only to discover that they are no longer the owner of their website.

The first step to take in this scenario is to go to a registrant such as Go Daddy and see if the website is even available.

If the domain is available, don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, just buy back your domain immediately! If your domain name is no longer available then you’ll want to head back to Whois.Net and determine who now owns your domain name. You can then follow up with them and see if you can purchase back your domain name. Unfortunately, unless your business name and domain name are trademarked, the new owner of the domain is under no obligation whatsoever to return your old domain back to you. This holds especially true in cases where business names are incredibly generic, i.e. Downtown Pizza. Of note, registrants such as Go Daddy have incredibly clear policies and procedures regarding domain expiration.

Step 4. Secure your website’s registrant and web host information

Now that you have all of the information regarding your registrant and web host you’ll want to make sure that this information gets stored in an appropriate place. I would advise that business owners create and print a text document that contains the url’s and username and password combinations of their registrant and web host. This document should then be sealed in an envelope and be placed in the business’ safe or safety deposit box.

Step 5. Consider learning a little more about web hosting and web design

As a business owner your time is both limited and precious. You should however consider learning the basics of web design and web hosting. This is a great book to help you get started;

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Written by | Mike Steben

Mike enjoys computers and technology, playing the piano, selling stuff on eBay, playing video games, cooking, and eating at Teddy's Pizza. He started CompuNoodle in 2009 and loves to hear from his readers.