Why you need to take control of your DNS and Web Site even if you hate geek stuff

If you are someone who just hates anything remotely geeky, if you get a headache whenever you hear words like DNS and Domain Name Registration, I understand. These are not things you want to think about, you'd rather just turn it all over to someone else and forget about it.

Yes, I get it. Technology is not your thing. But really, you need to suffer through the headache just a little bit because this stuff is IMPORTANT.

I know, I know. You want to click away and go read something else. I'm just going to confuse you and you will get that headache and it's not fair and..

Yeah. I get it. But really: this is important.

It's worth getting a headache

Why do I keep saying that it is so important that it is worth your getting a headache?

Because a much bigger headache can be down the road if you don't pay attention now.

I have been through this headache with multiple customers. That is multiple people who are very, very unhappy because their web site and/or email has stopped working and it's a very big mess and everybody is very upset and people are yelling and sometimes crying and it's enough to ruin your whole week, never mind the day.

Believe me, you do NOT want to have this problem.  So please struggle through this with me.  I will try to make it as easy to understand as I can and if something is at all confusing, please just tell me what it is in the comments and I will try my best to get you on the right track.  

OK?  Can we get started now?  Take a deep breath, it's going to be all right.

What is DNS?

DNS is what finds your website or your email. For example, my website is APLAWRENCE.COM.

When you type that into a browser, your computer uses DNS to find out where in the world APLAWRENCE.COM is so that it can show you my web page.

You don't have to know the technical details of how that works, but you should realize how important it is.

Why is DNS Important?

DNS is vital because without it, nobody can see our websites. If my DNS is screwed up, missing, broken or wrong, you can't type APLAWRENCE.COM into a browser and see my site. You won't be able to send email to me either. Without DNS, even though my website is up and running and ready to display pages, nobody will be able to see it and even though my mail server would be happy to process any email it gets, it won't get any if the DNS is not right.

Wait - don't click away!

I know what you are about to say. Your IT guy, your hosting company, your web guy, your cousin Vinny - somebody else takes care of this stuff, it's all under control, you don't need to worry about it.

Wrong. Every one of the customers who were sobbing at their desks while their world crumbled around them thought the same thing. They all had someone else taking care of all this geek stuff that they did not want to know about and everything was just fine.

Until it wasn't.

How Important is your website to you? How important is email to your domain?

My website is vital to my business. Without it, I will make very little money. The email that goes to aplawrence.com is also very important to me. That's the address I use for business. Yes, it gets forwarded to my personal gmail account, but if it stopped working, most of my customers wouldn't know how to reach me. A very large amount of my business is done through email, and most of it starts with someone contacting me. I would be dead as a business without email and my website.

How about you? Is it important to you? If it is, you need to know the answers to some very basic questions.

Who handles your DNS?

This is a very important question. Remember, if the DNS isn't right, nothing works. So who is it that handles that?

Did you say "Vinny" or "my IT guy"? Nope, that's wrong. Fortunately it's pretty easy to find the real answer.

WHOIS

You could do this from a command line with "whois" or "nslookup", but there are websites that provide this service. I just typed "whois" into google and found "whois.net". I put aplawrence.com into their Whois lookup box and it returned this:

WHOIS information for aplawrence.com :

[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]

[whois.verisign-grs.com]

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.

Domain Name: APLAWRENCE.COM

Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.

Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com

Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com

Name Server: NS23.WORLDNIC.COM

Name Server: NS24.WORLDNIC.COM

Status: clientTransferProhibited

Updated Date: 07-sep-2010

Creation Date: 24-oct-1997

Expiration Date: 23-oct-2011

That tells me that my domain is registered with Network Solutions and that the DNS servers (The "Name Server" lines) are NS23.WORLDNIC.COM and NS24.WORLDNIC.COM

Now, there is an extremely important follow up question. There will be other questions, but this is the most important one of all. If you cannot answer this question, you need to drop everything and go find the answer. Really, it's that important and I am not joking at all. You need to be able to answer this with a big "Yes!"

Do You Have an Account at Your Registrar?

In my case, the Registrar lines says Network Solutions. Yours might say something different, but the important question is whether or not you have an account there.

If you do not have an account, you don't have control of your domain.

Let that sink in for a minute. Yeah, I know: you think Vinny has it, or your IT guy, or your cousin Amy. So what happens if they get hit by a bus or get ticked off at you or suddenly decide to go live in an ashram somewhere?

I mention ashram because that actually happened to one of my customers. Ayup, the guy who had control of everything suddenly got religion, got on a plane, and disappeared from the secular world forever, leaving nothing behind.  What a fun day it was for my customer when they found that out!

If you do not have an account, you don't have control of your domain.

If you don't have control of your domain, you may or may not have control of your DNS. If you DO have control of your domain, you absolutely have control of your DNS.

Remember, DNS is important. If it is wrong, nothing works. You need control, or at least need to be able to take control should that be necessary. If you do not have an account at your registrar. you don't necessarily have control.

Let that sink in for a minute and then I have something worse to tell you.

If you don't have an account at your registrar, your domain could be sold

Really. Whoever does have that account has control of your domain name. As I said, they could take control of your DNS and, worse, they could sell your domain to someone else.

That's happened. The most famous instance involved the most valuable domain name in the world and involved fraud also, but less valuable domains have been lost by the people who assumed that they both owned the name and had control of it.

Did you notice that "clientTransferProhibited" in my information?  That helps protect against someone stealing my domain.

So you don't have the account - what now?

It's simple. You have to get it. Maybe all you have to do is call Amy and ask her for it. Maybe you need to cal the Registrar to explain the mess you are in and ask them what you will need to do. That can be time consuming and difficult, so if that is your situation, do not wait until you have a problem to get started with it. Contact them now and get the ball rolling.

You do have the account - great, what's the password?

Knowing the account name doesn't help much if you don't know the password, does it?

Here's something for you to ponder: the Registrar is probably happy to send that password to the email address they have on file for the account.

What email is that?  Does it even exist any more?  I have had customers in this pickle where the email address of record is an ancient address that was abandoned two decades ago.  There is no way for the Registrar to send the password and they are NOT about to change that information just because you call them up on the phone.

You need access to the account.  If you don't have it, go get it.  If you still don't understand how vital this is, please just trust me: you need to be able to access the account.

You have access - what now?

OK, you have the account, the password and you have verified that you can log in. What next?

Maybe nothing. If everything is working as you want it to, you can just check to make sure your domain is not expiring soon and then log out and get on with your life.

However, you may want to take direct control of your DNS while you are there.

Why would you want to control your DNS?

You may not want to. Your web hosting company might be doing that for you and that's fine, because as long as you have the Registrar access, you can always take that DNS control away from them if you need to.

Why would you?

Well, one reason might be that you don't like the way they are handling your site and you want to move it to another host. Most reputable hosting sites will help you do that quickly and with little or no hassle. However, every now and then we run into some possessive jerk who thinks he "owns" you and if he lets you go at all, he takes his sweet time about it and tries to gum up the works to "punish" you for leaving him.

By the way, this is a good time to ask this question:

Do you have a backup of your website somewhere where you can get at it should you need to move it somewhere else?

Do you even know HOW to get a backup of your website so that you could move it somewhere else if you needed to?

You don't know? You better find out. Stuff happens. Hosting companies go out of business, people die, people go crazy, go join an ashram, people have fights.

At the very least, go to your website and pull down "File->Save as" from your browser. Do at least that for every page even if it takes you the rest of the day. That's NOT a good backup suitable for moving somewhere else, but it is better than having nothing, so if you have nothing, and don't know right now how to do any better, do that.

Other reasons you might want control

You may want to move some functions in house. For example, you might want to set up your own mail server. You might have security cameras or other equipment that you want to be able to access from the world. Whoever handles your DNS now could add these things for you, but you are the one who thinks this stuff is important. If they happen to be futzing around, they could lose those entries. If you make them, you are in control.

There is one potential disadvantage. If you are using a hosting company and have not paid them for a static ip address, they could change your IP address arbitrarily. They won't usually do that, but it can happen, and if it did, you'd need to update your DNS yourself.

So how do you control your DNS?

With most Registrars, it's simple.  You just tell them that this is what you want to do and they or you make the change.  I have Network Solutions manage my DNS and I control it through their Advanced DNS Manager.  

I know, it sounds geeky, so don't worry about it.  Just remember it is something you can do if you need to.

Any questions?

I sincerely hope that you understood at least the first part of this - finding out who controls your domain and making sure you have an account you can access.

If you did not, please tell me what part is confusing you. This is very, very important and I do not want you to have the kind of mess that some of my clients have suffered.

If you are embarrassed to leave a comment, send me an email. There is a link at my profile and also at my main website that explains how to contact me. I do charge for that, but it's not a great deal of money.  If you ask here in the comments, the answers are free. 

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