Managing Your Domain

Introduction
The name of your nonprofit organization is one of your most important assets. With good marketing combined with excellent services, your donors and clients will recognize your name as a quality organization. The same is true for your domain name.

A Domain Name is the name of your website. It is the address that people type to visit it. Also known as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), a domain name is a very important part of your website. It should be associated with the name of your organization. If it is too long, people will either have a hard time remembering it or will make typos when they try to visit it. If it is similar to another website's URL, your visitors could get confused and go to that website instead. And finally, if your domain is mis-configured, the result could be a completely broken and useless website.

This is why you always should retain full control over your domain name. Many web hosting firms will try to sell you web hosting space and also try to get you to purchase your domain name through them. Unless the company provides you with complete administrative access to managing your domain, including the ability to transfer it to another company in the future, DO NOT buy your domain name from the company.

Imagine the following scenario:
You decide that it is time for your organization to have its own website. After looking at different companies, you decide to buy your domain name and web hosting package from company x. Six months later, after your website has repeatedly been down and you have had numerous problems with technical support, you decide to switch to a new company.

When you contact company x to transfer your domain name, they try to force you to stay with them, take a very long time in responding to your transfer requests, or tell you that you are required to continue hosting with them for 1 year before you are allowed to transfer your domain - or worse: It is possible companies would just simply try to steal your domain name.

The result: You are now stuck, and you don't know what to do.

As you can see, the implications of being able to completely manage your domain name are huge. It pays to be willing to spend a little extra time managing your domain name than to experience something similar to the scenario outlined for you above.

Recommended Companies
A Domain Registrar is a company that sells domain names (and gives you complete administrative access to do what you want with your domain). Smooth Stone Services uses NameCheap (www.namecheap.com) for all of its domain management.

Another good company to consider is Bulk Register (www.bulkregister.com).