Technology on Hua Hin Today

A Word of Caution About Your Website

Over the following issues we will cover a checklist of ten things to consider when owning a website - we will feature ONE of them each month.

Do you really own your website?

LET�S START at the beginning - owning your website. If you pay someone to buy the domain name and build it for you, you expect to own it. Right? The surprise is that you don�t, unless you have a written agreement that says you do. It doesn�t matter that you paid for it. In fact, nothing matters except that written agreement or the actual registrant name details.

You can check your website/domain name registration details at http://www.whois.sc/ just type in your domain name after the slash, ie;

http://www.whois .sc/mywebsite.com . You will be given all the details of the ownership of the website. Registration date, expiry date as well as the other technical details like, server features, IP addresses, DNS addresses and so on. If you are given a different registrant name, address, contact details rather than your own, this website DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU.

This usually means that the company or person who you paid to do your web work has got your website name registered as their own. So why is this a problem? sually you need to pay for your domain name (e.g.www.simple-biz.com) and for your hosting company fees, annually. Lets say your contracted company or person has disappeared (moved to another city/country, away on business, not contactable etc). That means (in most cases) you will NOT be able to pay for your own domain name
renewal fees, as your renewal details are send to the official registrant.

It is also possible that you will not even know when your website is expiring, as the details are not sent to you, as you are not the registered "owner" of the website. Unfortunately, we have had many customers come to us in this situation, having lost their precious domain name and website, as it has been too late for us to act on their behalf. So, if this happens to you what can you do?

Initially make a whois� check on your domain name (address provided above) and see who actually owns your World Wide Web business/Identity.

Secondly, check your website expiry date. If there are more than 15 days left to run, you can claim your domain name back and renew it, by simply contacting us.
If you have exceeded you renewal date, it still may be possible to claim it back. However, you must go through a domain name auction website, where you could be required to bid more than ten times the initial cost of your domain name, depending on the demand.

Take the action now and check your domain name registration details again, with the information provided here, if in doubt drop us an email at computers@huahintoday.net.

Please let us know about the areas you would like us to cover in the following issues.