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How to make sure your Website is transferred successfully and without hitch

2 Types of Domain You Need to Know About?¢‚Ǩ¬¶

There are gTLDs (Generic Top Level Domains) that are global domain names such as:

• .com
• .net
• .org
• .info
• .tv
• .biz
• .mobi

Then there are ccTLDs (Country Code Top Level Domains) that are country specific. The ones you need to recognise are:

• .co.uk
• .org.uk
• .net.uk
• .plc.uk
• .ltd.uk

Registrars and Hosts - What Are the Differences?

Domain Registrars

These are the people who take care of the domain for you. They effectively ‘own’ the domain for the purposes of allowing you to manage it.

Hosting Companies

These are the people who provide the services for your domain. A hosting company may provide Web hosting, email hosting; they may provide one or both

Hybrid Companies

Some companies provide both services as a Domain Registrar and also as a Hosting Company. These tend to be larger firms who are well established.

Before Starting ANY Transfer

Have you ensured that we have backed-up the website(s)? Are you sure? Check again before commencing with any transfer processes through your existing hosting company/domain registrar.

How to Handle UK ccTLDs

Firstly you need to understand that the UK registrars identify each other by an IPS tag. The IPS tag tells a company who is permitted to control and modify a domain.

With larger firms, managing and updating a domain is done via control panel. Companies such as Fasthosts, Iomart, UKReg, 123-Reg, 1&1, etc will all provide an online management system to allow you to do things like change the hosting company or transfer to another registrar.

Other firms may require you to send Fax/Phone/Letter to confirm changes of hosting and domain registrar.

When a customer wishes to transfer domain registration and also hosting over to us they need to provide the domain registrar with our IPS tag and nameservers; it is the domain owner?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s responsibility to initiate this transfer. If you have a control panel then you may find that it is within the control panel. If you don’t have a control panel, or don’t know how to access it, you need to contact your hosting and domain registration company for support in transferring. All they need to provide is our IPS tag and nameservers.

Once you are ready to transfer, you must ensure that we are ready for you and that the nameservers will be changed prior to the changing of the IPS tag. This will ensure that we can manage the hosting for you while the domain is being transferred over.

How to Handle the Rest

Transferring a domain in this situation clinches on the Administrative Contact of a domain. The person and email address listed under this title is the owner of the domain. The email address for the admin contact must be an active email account or the transfer can?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t complete.

Once again it is your responsibility to ensure that the email account (if it is yours) is operational and that you are receiving email for that account. You must then inform the domain registrar that you 1. wish to change the nameservers and 2. leave the company to join us. Provided we have set-up the site in our control panel and uploaded it, you can give the nameservers to your current registrar and they will be updated. Once this is done you should then initiate the transfer.

IMPORTANT. YOU must tell us the moment that you have initiated the transfer. There is usually a 72 hour window to initiate a transfer before a domain registrar will close its doors so that the process has to start again. Once you have told us, we will then initiate the transfer from our end.

As soon as this has happened the Admin Contact of the domain will start receiving emails from several companies wishing to confirm the transfer of the domain. If the Admin contact is actually the hosting company (this is often the case with Iomart and Legend) then they will likely handle this themselves. If it isn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t, then it is your responsibility to follow the instructions on the emails. If you don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t do this, you will cause the transfer to fail and it will be several days before the process can start again.

Checklist

• Have you had us make a backup of your website(s)?
• Have you given us a list of email accounts that you wants for their newly transferred domain(s)?
• Have you given the existing host/registrar the IPS Tag and Nameservers (for a UK domain)?
• If it is a global domain, have you ensured that, if applicable, the Admin Contact email address is active and able to receive emails?
• Have you contacted the registrar, changed the nameservers and then informed them of a desire to transfer away?

If you are unsure of any of these issues then you should contact us immediately for advice.

Problems

• If you haven’t had the nameservers changed prior to transferring, you increase the chance of extended downtime. In the case of .uk domains it is unfortunate that downtime is likely for a short period where as gTLDs are comparably quick to recognise a change of DNS or nameserver.
• If you haven’t notified either host/registrar promptly then you may find that the transfer will fail. Transfers are relatively easy to complete provided you ensure that both hosts are prepared for the transfer.
• Website losses are likely to happen if you initiate a transfer with the other company without confirming that your website is backed up. Never initiate a transfer without an affirmative confirmation that your website is copied and uploaded to the new hosting.