Don’t be held hostage by your “trusted” IT professional.

By Janet Pickel, MCSE

Part 1 – Internet Domain Registration

In case you don’t know it, when you leave the details to your IT Professional, be that a web developer, an IT solution provider, a business consultant, or even your own employee, you run the risk of losing your business identity or “digital assets” on the internet.   Let’s say a web developer sets up your web page on your behalf and handles getting your e-mail, develops your web page and something unfortunate happens to that person.  They hold the keys to access and where your e-mail and website resides.  If you don’t have a few things in place that you control, that identity could be lost to you completely.

How, might you ask?  Important fact number one:  Make sure you are the Registrant or owner of the domain, not the web developer, the solution provider, or the business consultant.  Without that you don’t have a leg to stand on.   To truly understand the nature of your external digital assets, let’s discuss the elements of the internet and how you communicate with your customers, starting with a web page. 

First, you register a domain name (i.e., ibm.com, microsoft.com, yourcompany.com, etc.) with a Registrar.  This process has a hierarchical approach.  An organization called ICANN, Internet Corporate for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a technical coordination body.  Their primary objective is ensuring the stability of the Internet’s system of assigned names and numbers.  “Names and numbers” is the database of domain names (microsoft.com) to IP address (unique address that computers and electronic devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other).  Registrars must go through an accreditation process to have access to the ICANN-designated top-level  domains (.com, .net, .org, .biz, etc.) in order to register domains for individuals or companies.

Many Registrars have an affiliate program whereby you sign up to resell domains using their relationship with the ICANN.  For example goddady.com is a Registrar and ynotweb.com is an affiliate of godaddy.com.  This means the owner of ynotweb.com manages domain registrations on behalf of godaddy.com.  Anyone can register a domain name at godaddy.com or any one of its many affiliates. 

I highly recommend you participate in this process to ensure that you and/or you company are the owners of the domain.   Do not let your business consultant, solution provider or web developer take ownership during this process!  The other key information is how the domain was purchased.  Often Registrars use that information for verification of who the owner of a domain is.

Once you have your domain name, what’s the next step?   In Part 2, I’ll discuss the creation of your web and where and how to host the website.   I’ll answer the question of what “hosting” means and what “web development” is and how they relate.