Owning a website is a bit like owning a car… there are records that you need to keep on hand so that you know who needs to be paid for what and when. Not knowing these things can lead to some annoying results.
First, let’s start by identifying things that you commonly need to buy and keep track of if you’re a website owner:
Domain Name
When you have a website, your files and data need to live somewhere on a computer that is on 24 hours per day, 7 days per week so that it can serve your site out to your visitors on demand. Your domain name is the alias that points to your space on that server. If you look at this like having a brick and mortar business, you can look at it like having a store at 1234 Main Street, but they know your business as “Awesome Antiques Exchange”. If your visitors want to come shop, but they don’t know where your business is exactly, they may look you up in the Yellowpages and find that you’re actually at 1234 Main street. They come, they shop, they buy… voila! In the same way, your hosting server might have an address that reads something like 123.456.789.000/my-website/ – but your visitors are never going to be able to remember that, so you go to a domain registrar somewhere and rent a sensible domain name that points to that ugly address with just numbers. This way if your business is AwesomeAntiquesExchage.com, that’s a lot easier for someone to remember, get to, and trust.
- Cost: Usually right around $20 per year for one domain name, but could be a bit more depending on the name. Probably not into the 100s of dollars though!
- Frequency: No less often than once per year and no more than 10 years.
- Who do you pay? Your registrar or a proxy company. GoDaddy and Wix are a couple of examples of who you might pay. Roost Web can also register domains for you if you have your website hosting through us!
- What you need to keep track of:
- Who is your registrar (who do you need to pay) and how frequently.
- What is the current cost of your domain. (It shouldn’t vary a whole lot from renewal to renewal).
- The login to your account at your registrar’s website. (Update that password at very least annually and use an email address and phone number that you’re sure you’ll always have access to as your account info.)
- Things to watch out for:
- Scams. Scammers will (not might… seriously, they WILL) send you texts, emails, phone calls, and even snail mail that is worded in a way that tells you that you need to pay them to renew your domain name. If you get a communication like this, don’t reply or click any links. Instead, go to your registrar’s official website and log into their web portal. Check to see if you really do have a bill and pay only through the official web portal.
- Make sure that your domain does not expire. Put that renewal date on your calendar. Update the payment details at your registrar as soon as you get a new credit card. If the domain does expire, someone can re-register your domain in their name and there isn’t a whole that you can do about it. They will often do other things like hold the domain for ransom and ask you for hundreds or thousands of dollars for them to transfer it back to you. And guess what… that’s not illegal if it was your fault you let it expire in the first place. So keep a tight grip on your domain name.
- Keep a tight grip on your login. If someone gets in, they can transfer your domain or cancel your registration and re-order it at another registrar where you can’t easily get it back. Here are things that will help:
- Enable 2-factor authentication on your registrar’s login.
- Don’t share your password with anyone – If you can, get anyone working with you on your site their own, non-administrative login.
- Also regularly change the password and make it a long one that is unique to only that account, and include lowercase and capital letters, numbers and symbols.
Website Hosting
Website hosting is that space on a computer somewhere that is on and online 24X7 to serve your site out to your visitors. This space is something that you rent from a service provider… GoDaddy, Wix and Bluehost are some common examples. (Roost Web Strategies also offers hosting.)
- Cost: Often around $25 per month, but can range up or down, and depends upon what term you have selected.
- Frequency: Often Monthly or Annually. Occasionally hosts will allow quarterly, or multi-year. Record your cost and term so you know when to expect a bill and for how much.
- Who do you pay? This might be the same company that registers your domain name or it could be a completely different company. Make note of who you pay and don’t pay anyone else who says you have a web hosting bill
- What to keep track of:
- Who to pay
- How much
- When your payments are due
- Your login and contact info on your website hosting account portal.
- Things to watch out for:
- Take steps to prevent hacking. If someone can get into your website they can fill it with malware and put your computer and your visitors’ computers and data at risk. They could update your account with different contact info. They could add services / costs to your account. They could delete everything. They are very interested in any customer and credit card data your site might be storing… they could steal all of that. They could do all kinds of things to cause you and your visitors and customers problems, and put your business and reputation at risk. So do all of those protective things like long, complex passwords, regular password updating and 2-factor authentication configurations and anything else the hosting company may have available for you.
- Keep your payment details up to date so your hosting doesn’t expire… if it does expire, your site will go down.
Email Hosting
Just like a website, email also needs to be hosted. Email can be hosted at your web host, or it can be (and it is recommended to be hosted) on its own hosting. A couple of popular hosting options for email are Microsoft 365 and Google Business Suite. A lot of these services you can purchase directly from the email company, but you may also purchase them through a proxy company (like GoDaddy or Bluehost). The proxy company purchases the service for you and manage that connection.
- Cost: Usually between $5 and $15 per month
- Frequency: Most email hosting services are monthly, although some give the option of billing annually.
- Who do you pay? Try to record who you pay right at the beginning when you first sign up. It’s one of the things I bump into that people normally have forgotten.
- What company is your email hosting through? (For example, you might have web hosting through BlueHost, but your email is handled by Google Business Suite. Your hosting company is Google Business Suite)
- Who to pay (Like above, you might have Google Business Suite, but you might actually pay BlueHost.)
- How much
- When your payments are due
- Your login and contact info on your email hosting account portal.
- What to watch out for:
- Always… security, security, security! Keep those passwords long and complex, change them frequently, don’t share them with anyone, and use 2-factor authentication if it’s offered. That goes for both your email account logins, as well as your main email hosting account portal login.
Resources in case you lose track of your domain, website and email information
Look your domain up on ICANN:
- https://lookup.icann.org/en From here you can often find…
- Domain Registrar (sometimes this info is encoded but you can always google the registrar number)
- Main hosting Server that your domain is pointing to (though sometimes it points to a proxy like Cloudflare which makes it more tricky to figure out where the hosting really is.)
Look up your domain at MX Toolbox:
- https://mxtoolbox.com/ From here you can find info about your email, such as…
- Your email service provider
- Email errors and misconfigurations
Reach out if we can help
Hopefully this was good information and will help down the line. If you’re interested in getting all of your website pieces in one place, let’s talk! We do web hosting and maintenance, email and domain registrations, so you can manage everything with us in one spot, so let us know if you’d like to talk about moving your site and its imperative services over to us!
