5 things to watch out for when you register a domain name

If you don't own your organization's domain name you can be abused, threatened, ridiculed, defrauded, blackmailed and worse....anything up to (but excluding) alien abduction and anal probes.

I do mean to scare you. It's so simple to register your domain name, it's just silly not to. The cost and effort is minimal. The risk of loosing your domain name to an abusive 3rd party is absolutely not worth taking. Unless alien abductions are your thing.

Here is a list of 5 things to watch out for when you register your domain name:

1. Make sure you are registered as the owner.
Some ISPs register new domain names with themselves as the owner. This means that you (the client) do not own that domain name...the ISP does. Of course you can lodge a domain name dispute and pay R 10 000 or go to court to get the name returned you, but a better bet would be to use a reputable ISP who protects your rights from the beginning, right?

And don't think this only happens with ISPs ran by 14 year olds from their dad's garage. Unfortunately not. Many large ISPs in South Africa still register domain names with themselves as the owner.

Probably not with an intent to defraud, but rather just bad systems and procedures. The effect on you remains the same: you don't own your own domain name until the official domain name registrar says so.

2. Pick a reputable, stable ISP.
Rather obvious don't you think? If you pick the lowest price ISP you can find, you will get what you pay for...plus possibly loose your domain when the ISP goes bankrupt or disappears...your domain name and all.

Pick an ISP who has been around for a while, who will probably stay around for a while and, most importantly, an ISP that has a (good) reputation to protect.

There is a reason they have a good reputation and a motive to make sure it stays that way.

3. Register variations of your domain name
When you register your name, make sure you register alternate spellings too. No sense in owning my-domain.co.za and not mydomain.co.za. If at all possible register the .com for your domain name in addition to the .co.za, for instance, register cozahost.com in addition to cozahost.co.za.

Many times a friendly Asian fellow will alert you to the fact that some dishonest miscreant in the far east is about to register your domain with the .cn (China) extension and do unspeakable and disgusting things to it. The friendly gentleman will offer to help you register the name before the villain does. Tell him he can have it. There are hundreds of domain extensions (eg: co.za, com.au, co.uk, etc, etc) and it is neither necessary nor practical to register them all...unless you are or are planning to do business in that country.

And besides, you know the .cn name "warning" is a spam scam, right?

We at Cozahost have systems that will automatically keep an eye on your .co.za and .com equivalents. If you have one and the other is available, we will let you know.

4. Don't make it too long
If your business name is Sipho's early morning gardening services, don't register that as a domain name. It's too long, and you probably do not refer to your business like that. If you and everyone else calls you Sipho's service, then that's the name to register. The rule of thumb is to register the domain name for your "brand" - the name commonly used to refer to your business.

5. Protect your products too
In addition to registering your company's domain name, also register domain names for your products - if they are "branded". For instance, if you are selling a product called "wacky widget", then you better own that domain name.

Reputable hosting companies will allow you to register domain names that can be used as "aliases" for your primary domain - at very little cost. This means that cozahost.co.za and cozahost.com will seem to be the same thing, ie the one is an alias of the other.

Remember that a domain name registration costs only a couple of Rands per year. It's silly not to take a few easy steps to protect your intellectual property on the internet.

Check if your domain name is available to register here...