This month our support team is continuing to tell you about the things we do – today, moving a domain.
At Octagon, we often get asked to assist with a domain move to different registrars or hosting providers. There is a huge difference between a web designer and an IT company. Web designers can make your website function well and look good. They can even sort out your search results to improve your visibility in the world. However, there are a lot of “less able web designers” out there who will say that they can do something technical and they simply don’t understand all that is involved.
Procedure
As with any project Octagon undertakes, it is important to have everything organised and to plan before any work is carried out. The cowboys out there will just say point your DNS at us and it will all work. NOT the case. What about your email? Your email could be with Microsoft 365, or it could be hosted by your current provider, which would instantly stop the second it was moved. How long could your company go on without receiving or sending email properly? Maybe you use a mass mailing solution such as Mailchimp – if your DNS settings are wrong, your email will end up in people’s junk. Or may not even arrive.
Conclusion
It is important to have the correct technical knowhow behind you when moving domains. And some words of advice – never give your domain overall control to someone you have had no dealings with before. Try to keep it with a long-standing partner, IT company or yourselves. If a website company has it and you have a disagreement, they can cause a lot of disruption.
This isn’t an overall view of web development companies, it is just that some are not as good as they claim to be, and some just don’t have real-world experience. Be cautious in your approach.
There are ways to get your website work completed without damaging your hosting and DNS.
Let us know if you need help.
Martin Mayes – by-line and other articles
