Are You Sure You Really Own That Domain Name?

My week started out pretty well having finally released the new design for this blog.  With that monkey off my back I had turned my attention to other projects in the pipeline and was discussing one of them with another blogger.  During our discussion I mentioned the domain name that I had registered for that project.

I was feeling great, really energised and motivated, until this other blogger pointed out that there was already a website running on that domain.

What!?!  How can that be???

Sure enough, the domain name had a website on it.  I quickly checked my emails to make sure I was talking about the right domain name.  I was.  I logged into my web hosting account and checked to make sure I had registered the domain name I was thinking of.  I had.

But the live website, and the WHOIS information on the domain, both told a different story.  In a mild panic I logged a support ticket with my host and waited for them to respond.

As of today the ticket has been closed off and the outcome is as follows:

• The domain was first registered in 2007
• At the time I registered it, it was actively owned by someone else (ie not available)
• A system error resulted in an “available” result for the initial check, and then a “success” result for the registration, even though the registration actually failed
• I’d gone 8 months since registering the domain believing I owned it, and the whole time that was untrue

Now this is not a complaint about my host.  They are a great host, I plan to keep using them for domain names and web hosting, they responded promptly and followed the matter up as well as they could.  I’m happy with what they’ve done, even if they couldn’t give me good news.  Compared to the stories I hear about some hosts I’ve received great service under the circumstances.

This post is to let you know what I should have done, and what I will now do in future when it comes to domain names.

Checking Domain Availability

When I’m brainstorming domain name ideas, instead of relying on one availability checking tool, I will now use at least two.  The important thing here is to use reputable hosts that will not try to steal the domain name after your query and hold it hostage, forcing you to register it with them.

GoDaddy is generally recommended as one you can trust.  I also use AussieHQ here in Australia.

Even if the domain names are being reported as available I will also do a WHOIS query to see whether they are already registered.  GoDaddy has a tool for this, as does Domain Tools.

Finally, I will simply try to open the website in my web browser.

Verifying Successful Registration

As I’ve learned, receiving an email saying “registration was successful” is not enough.  The tip from my web host is to wait a few days and then check the WHOIS information to verify that you’re now the registered owner.

There is no rocket science to this one, I’m simply going to drop a reminder in my calendar to run this check 3 days after I register any new domain name.

Put Up Some Content

I own about 50 domains so I don’t plan to do this for all of them, but for my most important names that I’m not already hosting sites on I am going to drop a simple HTML page on them so that I can easily check that they are still online.

I haven’t pinpointed an exact tool for this yet, but I’m hoping to use a monitoring script that will verify that a certain phrase or word exists on the page and have it check every week or month.

Other Domain Name Security Tips

While I was waiting for my host to investigate I did a lot of reading about other situations where people have lost domain names that they genuinely did own.  These generally fell into two categories – the name was stolen, or it was allowed to lapse and then snapped up by someone else.

There is some good advice out there to avoid these scenarios, and I happen to already be doing them anyway, but here they are for your own benefit:

• Contact Details – always use correct, valid contact details for your domain names. It is tempting to protect your privacy with fake details, but if you do this you can have your ownership revoked.  If you’re worried about the privacy of your home address use a PO Box or a business address.
• Lock Them – your host or registrar should provide the ability to lock the domain name and prevent it being transfered without your authorisation.
• Auto-Renew – Set your domain names to automatically renew and bill your credit card, and keep those credit card details up to date.  Better still, set the renewal period for more than just 1 year.  If you can afford to register the domain name for 5 or 10 years, do it.
• Email Addresses – The email address you register with the domain name should never be hosted on the domain name itself.  Use an alternate domain name so that it will keep working if your domain name should ever have problems.  You should also never GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail or any of the other free webmail services for your contact address.  All of those services have a history of hacks and simple exploits that can give someone else access to your email.
• Use Reputable Hosts – When something goes wrong you need a good host that will work hard to solve the problem for you.  Sometimes this means paying a little more.  Its okay to register a bunch of domain name with the cheapest registrar you can find, but for your best and most important ones I would pay the extra and go with someone who has a good track record of support.

And with that, I’m off to double check all the domain names in my portfolio to make sure I do still own them.

Image Credit: Flickr