Important Warning before you build your website

Agent Steve Laube shared some important advice
with members of ACFW last week.
With his permission I have copied it below to help
all of you. Think about this before you
build your website.

NEVER let someone else control the details of your domain name. 

Today. Right now. Immediately. Make sure you have access to your domain

registration. 

This has nothing to do with who hosts your site. That is something else

entirely.

Get the account ID and password for whatever company controls your domain.

It could be Network Solutions, it could be virtually anyone. But as soon as

you get that info...change the contact info (e-mail address) to an e-mail

address you control (gmail, hotmail, yahoo, if you must).

I once bought a domain name at a bargain and set up a small business around

that name. I didn't know that the company was in Australia and that they

sold their business. When I wanted to switch hosts (to someone cheaper and

better) it took nearly a month of wrangling and research to find out who

controlled my domain registration. A nightmare.

I switched everything to godaddy.com and I now control the whole thing.

Another example. Big publisher creates web site for author, secured domain

and hosted the site. Very cool...except...author switches publishers. Old

publisher will no longer do site updates. So author gets the site hosted

elsewhere where he can make changes himself. BUT he forgets that the domain

name was registered and controlled by his former publisher. So when it came

time to renew the subscription to his domain name, the publisher let it

expire. Because the e-mail address for the domain registration renewal was

sent to the old publisher, the author did not know that his domain name

expired. Guess what happened?

A porn site grabbed his domain name and linked it to their "date older

women" web site. Overnight his entire ministry was linked to something less

than ideal. (an understatement if there ever was one) He had to get a

different domain name and start over. Unfortunately his first six books and

all search engines were linked to his old domain name.

A year later he now has regained control of his domain name by using a

service called snapnames.com that grabs abandoned domain names. Fortunately

the porn site did not renew the subscription.

Bottom line? Control everything about your own web site. Hire someone to

help if you must, but never let control of your Internet presence out of

your hands.

Hope that helps,

Steve

The Steve Laube Agency


Thanks for the advice Steve, and thank you for your willingness
to share it with all of us. You can visit
Steve's website and find out about helpful resources for writers
at www.SteveLaube.com