February 2010 PROTECT YOUR ASSETS If you're thinking about outsourcing your website design or programming, then consider how much control you will ultimately have over it. Today's friendly Web designer or programmer can become tomorrow's hostage taker, holding your website, shopping cart, or other Web-based technology for ransom over even the slightest disagreement. Protect yourself. In this post, I show you how. Be the master of your own domain You or your company should own the domain. Register it yourself. It's cheap and easy, and you can configure the domain name server (DNS) in a matter of minutes to point to wherever you want it hosted. By registering your own domain, you gain the following: Ownership of the domain (yourcompany.com) and any subsets of it, such as blog.yourcompany.com and shop.yourcompany.com. Freedom to specify contact information for the domain's registrant and administrative and technical contacts. Ability to move your site to a different hosting service and reconfigure the DNS to point to the new location. Ability to use your domain for whatever email addresses you want to add. Be cautious of web design companies that want you to pay them for registering your domain.  They will often charge you 50% more then the actual costs, and persuade you into purchasing the domain for multiple years! A qualified designer will assist you with purchasing your domain and advise you on the benefits of doing so.   A company that refuses to do so is only setting themselves up to be in control of YOUR BUSINESS! DOMAINS TYPICALLY COST $10 PER YEAR If you paid more than that, you should take a closer look at your design company. $10 PER YEAR