After last reviewing just how many domain names I have, it dawned on me that they were all spread over at least 4 different registrars, and I couldn't work out why.
Looking back, I think I started out buying domains back in 2002, and chose GoDaddy as it just seemed the cheapest for .com domains at the time, plus I liked their adverts. However, when I decided to buy some .co.uk domains I decided to look for a company closer to home, as I don't think GoDaddy were offering .co.uks then.
So after a bit of researchng the net for decent registrars, my gut feeling told me to go with LCN.com (Low Cost Names) as for £8 for 2 years and a very user friendly admin interface I couldn't really grumble. I recently bought additional domains from Purplecloud.
Back in the day most of my domains weren't hosted and I had no hosted email account (purely because I was too cheap to pay for any :-) ), so I made full use of the email and web forwarding facilities to my free Yahoo email and free Webspace with my ISP. But as time went on, and as I started to move into the professional world of IT, I realised I needed to look and be a bit more professional. So the hunt for a hosted webspace and email provider was on.
In the end I've come full circle back to GoDaddy and nervously taken on their web hosting offering and I'm even considering moving my entire email to them too. I say nervously because even though they say they have a European data centre, one can't help but be a bit skeptical about hosting your prized websites and email with a foreign company. But on the other hand GoDaddy have been around for years, and there are a lot of UK companies/people hosting their websites on there, so it can't be bad at all.
As the setting up of my new hosting went well, most recently I started to wonder why on earth do I have so many domains with different companies. I have never experienced the process of transferring domains before, and was very worried about the safety of it (e.g. whether it would disappear during transit to the new provider), so I decided to try it on one of the .co.uk domains I wasn't that bothered about. To my surprise it transferred to new registrar with 5 mins. The .com transfer wasn't that straight forward though, and at one point I started to wish I'd never started. lol.
A lot of things at Purplecloud are not automatic, so I had to email their support team for an authorisation code, which took about 20 hours. Then I had to go back to GoDaddy, buy the domain transfer service, wait for an email that had a Transaction ID and a security code, enter that into my account and then wait up to 5 days for confirmation (which I think is way too long to be waiting around).
So now I have all my .com domains at registered at Godaddy and all .co.uk domains registered at LCN.com (only because you can't transfer .co.uk to Godaddy at present :-( ). As soon as Godaddy sort there game out to transfer .co.uk domains I'm transferring everything to them. One provider is just so much easier.
Domain name registration prices have come down a lot over the years, so it pays to shop around at renewal time. Don't just go for the lowest price one though. Consider things like access to DNS management, any transfer fees, email/web forwarding facilities, etc.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Friday, 24 September 2010
My virtual world... So much to do, so little time
3 months ago I embarked on a mammouth task to streamline all my online business and personal activities. I have so many domain names that I'd purchased in the past, but wasn't doing anything with them. Some how it felt like I was protecting the crown jewels by not giving them up. Lol. 'One day I might just do X, Y Z with that domain' I kept telling myself. But then I added them all up and realised I have 7 "SEVEN" domain names and only 2 of them are actually for something meaningful, plus 10 email accounts. You really have to question your own logical. Things just can't go on like this anymore. Lol.
So I gave myself an ultimatum. Come up with an viable idea for each domain and implement it in the next 9-12 months or loose the domain.
So here's my progress 3 months on:
Hosting:After much research, in June I purchased Deluxe Hosting plan at GoDaddy with the benefit of being able to host multiple domains in one hosting plan. I had used free basic hosting with various ISPs in the past, and had one paid-for hosting plan with Purple Cloud for the last 5 years. I think it was alright for personal websites and at £10 - £20 per year you can't really complain. But I felt I needed a much more stable and reliable service for hosting business websites. Here's hoping GoDaddy won't let me down. So far So Good. :-). Silly thing is I renewal on Purple cloud again just incase GoDaddy let me down (and because I didn't have enough time to migrate everything over to the new hosting service in time).
Domain 1 (My professional profile website) - This domain was lying around for years doing nothing apart from having an email account. Since I work in IT I thought it best to have a more professional profile of my skills and experiences. Plus it would give me more space to elaborate on things I have to keep short on my CV. I installed Word Press for this domain as it helps to keep my site clean and tidy. Hopefully this profile will get me a few job offers in the future too :-).
Domain 2 (silktrends.co.uk) - Already has a functioning website that I created 3 years ago for a Hair Salon business I jointly own, but the design is very basic (although professional) and isn't really that exciting. It at least does the job and provides key information about the salon and services available. Decided to redesign the site to make it a bit more user friendly, prettier and easier to maintain. Wordpress springs to mind again! :-). The new site will be re-launched soon.
Domain 3 and 4 (afrohairsalon.co.uk and .com): I purchased these domains as searchable domain names likely to be picked up by search engines for the hair salon business. Currently used for testing the new salon website I've designed (still under construction). Installed Word Press for this, with a few plugins, and designed a customised template for it. Will be released as the main Silk Trends website shortly.
Domain 5 (dcfhosting.co.uk) - This is purely used for development and testing of websites. Nothing much going on there at the moment.
Domain 6 (wheresithappening.com) - This was the first ever domain name I purchased back in 2002. Apart from assigning the domain to my hosting plan and pointing it my professional profile website (as something pretty to look at), not done much else. Lol.
Domain 7 (wheresithappening.co.uk)- Lord knows what happened to this one. Its currently parked even though I didn't request it to be :-(.
Emails:
Deleted a few mailboxes that were getting more spam than anything useful. Started to research the best place to host my business email, as need somewhere that has a decent web mail interface and includes pretty of storage space. Purplecloud's webmail just isn't doing it for me (very ugly interface and not that user friendly). Currently considering Google Apps or GoDaddy. But it really hurts me to have to pay for it to get decent size storage. Though as the saying goes 'you buy cheap, you buy twice'. Lol.
So there you have it, a little bit of progress but nothing to start popping the champagne about. Lol. There's just so much to do and so little time. If I'm going to beat my Ultimatum things really need to move on much quicker.
So I gave myself an ultimatum. Come up with an viable idea for each domain and implement it in the next 9-12 months or loose the domain.
So here's my progress 3 months on:
Hosting:After much research, in June I purchased Deluxe Hosting plan at GoDaddy with the benefit of being able to host multiple domains in one hosting plan. I had used free basic hosting with various ISPs in the past, and had one paid-for hosting plan with Purple Cloud for the last 5 years. I think it was alright for personal websites and at £10 - £20 per year you can't really complain. But I felt I needed a much more stable and reliable service for hosting business websites. Here's hoping GoDaddy won't let me down. So far So Good. :-). Silly thing is I renewal on Purple cloud again just incase GoDaddy let me down (and because I didn't have enough time to migrate everything over to the new hosting service in time).
Domain 1 (My professional profile website) - This domain was lying around for years doing nothing apart from having an email account. Since I work in IT I thought it best to have a more professional profile of my skills and experiences. Plus it would give me more space to elaborate on things I have to keep short on my CV. I installed Word Press for this domain as it helps to keep my site clean and tidy. Hopefully this profile will get me a few job offers in the future too :-).
Domain 2 (silktrends.co.uk) - Already has a functioning website that I created 3 years ago for a Hair Salon business I jointly own, but the design is very basic (although professional) and isn't really that exciting. It at least does the job and provides key information about the salon and services available. Decided to redesign the site to make it a bit more user friendly, prettier and easier to maintain. Wordpress springs to mind again! :-). The new site will be re-launched soon.
Domain 3 and 4 (afrohairsalon.co.uk and .com): I purchased these domains as searchable domain names likely to be picked up by search engines for the hair salon business. Currently used for testing the new salon website I've designed (still under construction). Installed Word Press for this, with a few plugins, and designed a customised template for it. Will be released as the main Silk Trends website shortly.
Domain 5 (dcfhosting.co.uk) - This is purely used for development and testing of websites. Nothing much going on there at the moment.
Domain 6 (wheresithappening.com) - This was the first ever domain name I purchased back in 2002. Apart from assigning the domain to my hosting plan and pointing it my professional profile website (as something pretty to look at), not done much else. Lol.
Domain 7 (wheresithappening.co.uk)- Lord knows what happened to this one. Its currently parked even though I didn't request it to be :-(.
Emails:
Deleted a few mailboxes that were getting more spam than anything useful. Started to research the best place to host my business email, as need somewhere that has a decent web mail interface and includes pretty of storage space. Purplecloud's webmail just isn't doing it for me (very ugly interface and not that user friendly). Currently considering Google Apps or GoDaddy. But it really hurts me to have to pay for it to get decent size storage. Though as the saying goes 'you buy cheap, you buy twice'. Lol.
So there you have it, a little bit of progress but nothing to start popping the champagne about. Lol. There's just so much to do and so little time. If I'm going to beat my Ultimatum things really need to move on much quicker.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Hosting other people's domains
Still working on migrating my various websites over to my new Deluxe hosting package at GoDaddy. So far so good with multiple domains that I own (both goDaddy registered domains and externally registered domains). As that went well, I thought it would be just as straight forward to host someone else's domain on my hosting account.
I simply asked the person who owned the domain to change their nameservers to goDaddy nameservers ns25.domaincontrol.com and ns26.domailcontrol.com. I then went into my hosting account and added a new folder and uploaded all their website files.
I then went to the Domain Management section within Hosting Control center and added the domain and selected the folder where the content was stored. Back at the list of domains I have hosted, this new domain is listed as pending.
After nearly 16 hours waiting, the list is still showin it at Pending. Surely it can't take that long.
I started to research to see how long it was taking other people. Up to 48 Hours :-(. But I realised I missed out step anyway, so it would have never of worked.
Since the domain is not owned by me (not in my GoDaddy Shopper acount) you have to get the owner to created/modify the domain's 'A' record to point to the IP address of your Hosting account.
The domain is still listed as Pending in Hosting Control Center, but I have more confidence that it will actually work once its finished transferring (or whatever it is its doing). lol.
This 48 hours waiting after each change is getting a bit too looonnng.
I simply asked the person who owned the domain to change their nameservers to goDaddy nameservers ns25.domaincontrol.com and ns26.domailcontrol.com. I then went into my hosting account and added a new folder and uploaded all their website files.
I then went to the Domain Management section within Hosting Control center and added the domain and selected the folder where the content was stored. Back at the list of domains I have hosted, this new domain is listed as pending.
After nearly 16 hours waiting, the list is still showin it at Pending. Surely it can't take that long.
I started to research to see how long it was taking other people. Up to 48 Hours :-(. But I realised I missed out step anyway, so it would have never of worked.
Since the domain is not owned by me (not in my GoDaddy Shopper acount) you have to get the owner to created/modify the domain's 'A' record to point to the IP address of your Hosting account.
The domain is still listed as Pending in Hosting Control Center, but I have more confidence that it will actually work once its finished transferring (or whatever it is its doing). lol.
This 48 hours waiting after each change is getting a bit too looonnng.
Friday, 25 June 2010
Proper grown up hosting… Finally
After years of messing around with free hosting services from my ISP or other freebie services online, I finally forked out my hard earned cash on some proper web hosting.
With months of research into the services available and comparing features, I finally decided on GoDaddy as my new hosting company. I have been a customer of GoDaddy for almost 10 years, buying domain after domain from them, but I had been too scared to actually host any of my sites with them because... well, they were 'Big'..., and 'Foreign' ... and slightly 'too cheap'. lol.
But times have move on this then, and GoDaddy have invested a lot in their business which has boosted my confidence in them, especially the set up of there European Hosting Centre, to make us over this side of the pond feel a little bit more secure.
With months of research into the services available and comparing features, I finally decided on GoDaddy as my new hosting company. I have been a customer of GoDaddy for almost 10 years, buying domain after domain from them, but I had been too scared to actually host any of my sites with them because... well, they were 'Big'..., and 'Foreign' ... and slightly 'too cheap'. lol.
But times have move on this then, and GoDaddy have invested a lot in their business which has boosted my confidence in them, especially the set up of there European Hosting Centre, to make us over this side of the pond feel a little bit more secure.
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