Here’s something I’ve had complaints about.
For some reason it seems to be very difficult for clients to understand the difference between Hosting and Registration.
Generally what happens is a mis-communication between what is covered with various types of hosting and registrations.
So as is the standard around here, I’m going to break this down for you like you’re a five year old.
Domain Registration: This basically says that you own the rights to a domain name, a registrar will generally have some default name servers they will point a domain name to that will display pages the advertise their services.
They will provide a facility to change the name servers entries to point to a hosting service’s name servers. This can either be in the form of a control panel or requesting things directly.
If your domain expires, you will need to contact the company that handles this. It could be the company that provides your web hosting if applicable.
Domain Hosting: This boys and girls is generally something that’s convoluted in nature. The hosting company will charge for the use of their name servers (should only be a small fee), this will allow them to provide services such as e-mail hosting and domain name forwarding. But they don’t provide any space for hosting your files.
This is a very important distinction.
Domain forwarding will generally insert an invisible frame to request the page through. This has a whole lot of drawbacks, such as not being able to bookmark a specific page.
In short I wouldn’t recommend doing it! Just cut the crap and point the A record (or even better the name servers!) to the server where your files are hosted. If you’re paying for a service to host your site this should be available.
If it’s not, do yourself a favor and find a new host.
Web Hosting: Now to add one more variable to this mess, Web Hosting which I’ve covered before (http://alltech-nologic.com/2010/07/webhosting-packages-101/).
Cut the Crap
I like things simple and I like things clean, so if I were to run a website (which I do), I would make sure that company I went with made things as simple as possible. As well I would take being able to administer my own site over having someone else do it for me.
But then again I’ve RTFM, I would suggest that anyone who wants run a website either be willing to and do the same or hand it over to someone who has. It’ll save a lot of pain and frustration for everyone involved.
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