Do You Own Your Business Domain Name? - Think Again!

By: How To Info

Let's say you've been running your small business for a few years now and your website is a big part of bringing you business. When you first had your website built, you had it done by a website designer who also offered to host your site and register your domain name for you. Maybe you thought that was a great idea since you didn't know anything about building a website, hosting it on the internet, or registering a domain name. You just needed the site up and running to help promote your business. And your website designer was offering to take care of all that for you (for a price, of course).

Now it's a few years later and maybe you've outgrown your original website designer's services for whatever reason, and you need to switch to a new service. And here is where you discover the shock of your life when your original website designer tells you that they own the copyright design for your website and they also OWN your domain name! And they will not allow you to transfer your website to another host unless you pay them a large sum of money. All this comes to light even after you PAID them to build your website and provide other services for several years.

The focus of this article is not to delve into the legal issues of website design or content copyright ownership. It will focus on protecting your business DOMAIN NAME and website content before you encounter the above problem before you even get your website built. The key is to register the domain name YOURSELF so that you control the ownership. NEVER, EVER let somebody else register your business domain name! It is a simple task that anyone can do. One of the more well known registrars is Network Solutions and you can do your own domain name registration online at their website.

I personally know of atleast four people this happened to. They spent thousands of dollars getting their websites built, only to find out that they don't even own their business domain name when a dispute came up with the website designer who registered the name for them. People automatically assume that the website designer or hosting company will register the domain in YOUR NAME.... WRONG! And you probably assume that since your business name is registered, how could somebody else own your domain name? So now you get to find out what a major hassle it is to correct this problem while your online business suffers.

There are legal ways to remedy this situation but again, it is beyond the scope of this article. The point of this article is to PREVENT things like this from ever happening. There are a few things you can do ensure this never happens to you:

1. Register the domain name yourself so that only you have access to the ownership and administration of it.

2. If you hire a website designer to build your site, make sure you have a signed CONTRACT that states that YOU own the rights to all designs and content of YOUR website. It must be stated clearly that the website designer must hand over all files upon termination of their services and after they have received your payment in full for services up to that point.

3. As part of the service, pay for, and get a BACKUP copy of your website every time the designer makes a major change to your site. That way if you ever have an unsolvable dispute with your website designer, you can simply hire a new designer / hosting company to upload your site elsewhere with minimal downtime... because you are the one in control of your domain name registration and the server settings contained within that account.

These are just a few basic things a small business owner can do to protect their online business. Not everyone has the money to pay a lawyer, and you shouldn't have to pay one to take some very simple precautions that will protect your ownership and content of your website, and business in general.

Lastly, there are many honest website designers and hosting companies out there who take pride in helping you develop your online business. Spend the time to look around and get some references. Try to choose services from a business located in your own city so that you develop a good relationship with them. It's hard to do that if your website service provider is located in another country or half way around the world.