Lately I have noticed that a lot of clients trying to transfer their .co.za domain names to me because of issues with their current hosting provider, are finding that those names have actually been registered in the name of the service provider and not themselves. Obviously this is problematic because whenever updates are made to the names for changes in hosting, the people who are listed as the Registrant, Admin & Technical contact are sent the emails from Uniforum (the administrators of the .co.za name space). If the mail recipients don’t approve the changes within 24 hours by replying with a YES vote to Uniforum, no changes get made and your name stays where it was.

The practise that I follow when registering domain names in all the top level domain name spaces, is to nominate you, the owner of the name, as the registrant. I get named as the Technical and Admin contact. This ensures that should you for whatever reason be unhappy with the service you get from me, you are able to update the DNS at Uniforum yourself, or get your new provider to do it for you.

I also encourage clients to register their domain names themselves because then at least they are assured of being in complete control of the name at all times. Uniforum have a very antiquated method of submitting updates via ASCII emails, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really simple to do. The cost price to register a new name with them is R50 and any updates are free. I charge a little over R100 for the service if clients are not comfortable doing it themselves.

The international domain names work differently to .co.za names and everything related to the name (contact info and DNS) is updated via your browser on the website of the company you register the name with. There are several registrars out there and the pricing varies depending on the company. The most popular registrar for the ordinary man in the street is GoDaddy.com, but be forewarned, their systems, whilst advanced, are heavily designed to cross sell you other services and domain names. You may go through about 4 or 5 screens with an immeasurable number of links and special offers before you finally get to actually make your payment for the domain name. The last time I checked they are charging in the region of $11.50 for a .com name.

So, what do you do if your .co.za domain name has been registered in your hosting providers name? The best practise is to approach them and ask them to please update it so that you are the registered owner. Make sure that your email address is the one on file for the registered owner of the name. It’s a good idea to use an email address that is not on the same name, so as to avoid any complications where the host blocks email from that particular address (they shouldn’t, but there are some real sharks out there).

You can check your .co.za domain name status at any time by visiting this link: http://co.za/whois.shtml

If you have any questions about domain names, please use the comments section below to raise them and I will answer them for you here.

Dallas

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