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Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine Vol 02 Issue 09
------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine -------
Vol 2, Issue 9
Wow! Once again I got a tremendous response from that last
installment of our series on owning your website (and the dangers
of not controlling that valuable commodity). Thanks go out, too,
to my guest author, Chris Juillet, for his great piece on
intellectual property on your site. Check out the archives at
http://cyberdatasolutionsllc.com/ezine/ if you missed the first
two parts.
This time we'll take a look at a few ideas on how to avoid
getting in trouble in the first place and what you can do if you
discover that you aren't the one in control.
Also, on a slighlty related note, if you would be interested in
writing a guest article for this newsletter, please contact me.
I can't promise that you'll get anything more than public
adulation, but that's better than nothing I guess.
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In This Issue...
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1. Article: Avoiding the Website Landmines
2. Blog Posts
3. Shameless Self-Promotion
4. The Fine Print
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1. Article: Avoiding the Website Landmines
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Okay, in the first two parts of this series, we talked about the
dangers of not controlling your website and some danger signals
which might indicate that you are in a less-than-controlling
place. Now, how can we avoid getting into trouble in the first
place? And if are already in trouble, what can we do?
1. This is a big one, so I'm putting it first: Sign up for your
own web hosting service and register your own domain. If you
are working with a designer, they may have certain
requirements. Ask them to give you a list. Ask if they
recommend any particular service. Most hosting services have
excellent sales teams who are more than happy to help you walk
through the process of signing up. They're just a phone call
away.
2. Save the hosting information in a safe and preferrably
redundant location. Personally, I keep a copy of my original
"welcome" message from my hosting service both in an email
folder on my computer *and* in hard-copy in my filing
cabinet. This information is about as vital to the health of
your company as your bank account numbers. Treat it in the
same way.
3. Review the information periodically. This is especially
important if you have more than just one person in the
company. Once a quarter or so, check that the people listed
as the billing, technical, and administrative contacts for
your domain are still with the company *and that their contact
information hasn't changed.* Is the domain about to expire?
How embarrassing (and damaging to the botom line) would it be
if a potential customer went to your website only to discover
that it wasn't there any more because you forgot to renew the
domain? Even worse, what if someone else snagged your domain
before you had a chance to renew it?
So, what if your site already exists and you didn't create it?
What if someone else controls your vital information? You've got
a few options, but they will be dependent both on the specifics
of your situation and on the goodwill of whomever holds your site
information.
1. Very politely ask for your site and domain information. You
can present the request as something as simple as you want to
have that information just in case something happens to them.
It's a valuable piece of your company's operating
infrastructure, so it only makes sense that you should have a
copy of it, right? If the person in question refuses
outright, then you might have a problem. They have you by the
throat and there's not much you can do about it unless you
choose to take drastic measures. More on that later. Most
people will have no problem with the request. The only time
they might would be if they are hosting your site themselves.
By giving you access to your site, they would also be giving
you access to their own site and any others they might be
hosting.
2. If you discover that you don't even have anyone to ask, then
you've got a different problem. You can use one of the
"whois" (http://whois.net/) sites to track down your registrar
and hosting service. Unfortunately, the information returned
from these services is not standardized in any way, so I can't
tell you exactly where the information will be. Once you find
out *who* they are, you can then contact those services and
request your information. They should have procedures in
place which will allow you to do this, though depending on how
bad your situation is (the contact person doesn't work for you
anymore, you've moved and have a new phone number and a new
email address, you don't know the answer to your security
question -- "What was the name of Aunt Suzie's pet iguana?")
the procedures can take weeks to work through and *may* cost
you money to process.
3. If someone is withholding your information despite your
repeated *polite* requests. You may have to resort to legal
persuasion. I am not a lawyer, though, so I can't advise you
on this. You need to consult with someone like Chris Juillet,
(http://www.juilletlaw.com/) last month's guest author, a
lawyer who speciallizes in intellectual property.
4. If all else fails you may have to abandon your domain. This
is not a step to take lightly. Moving a site to a new domain
and hosting service means that you have to start over from
nothing. In fact, you are worse off than nothing because you
have an established presence at your old location. You will
have no way of getting out the information that you've moved
to a new online storefront.
5. If you do have to take that last step, you may want to
consider registering on one of the domain watch
services. These companies offer (for a price, of course) to
keep a watch on a domain or domains of your choosing and
notify you if they ever become available. Chances are that no
one is malicious enough to actively keep your domain away from
you, so they probably will let it expire. If they *are* being
malicious about it, see #3 about legal steps.
That's about all I have on this topic. If you have any questions
or comments, please send them along to:
gpeters@cyberdatasolutionsllc.com
I would love to hear if you've run into any other situations like
this and how you managed to solve them.
Copyright 2008, Greg Peters
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2. Blog Posts
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Links to posts on the "Clearing Up the Confusion" Blog from the
last year:
Sunday, February 03, 2008 -- Show Your Colors with iGoogle Themes
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2008/02/show-your-colors-with-igoogle-themes.html
"I've written a couple of times now about the custom themes for
the iGoogle personal homepage. My favorites include the beach
scene (where I swear I saw the Loch Ness Monster at around 3am
one night) and the images of different planets...."
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 -- When Two Equals Three
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2007/03/when-two-equals-three.html
"... I was so proud of myself. I had set up a "to do" list on my
personalized Google homepage in order to remember some of the
ideas I wanted to cover in the articles I was to write. I had
added a recurring event to my "Remember the Milk" calendar, so
I'd know which Tuesday I was supposed to be sending out the next
issue...."
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3. Shameless Self-Promotion
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The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg
Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data
Solutions. CDS has been helping website designers develop better
web presence for their clients for more than a decade. Visit us
on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your
webmaster.
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4. The Fine Print
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