Do you own your domain name?

A sad yet thought provoking case landed on my desk last week and raised an issue that can be catastrophic for website owners.

Ask many website owners if they actually own their domain names and many will assume they do. The reality however can be alarming.

I received a call from a gentleman last week who had found himself in what turned out to be a really awkward situation.

Sadly his web developer passed away suddenly, leaving his wife with a business she had no idea what to do with. Upon further investigation it emerged that the gentlemans domain name was actually registered to his web developer, which meant that to transfer the domain to him meant working with domain registry organisation Nominet and asking the developers widow to provide death certificates etc. in order to release the domain which clearly no one wanted to ask her to do at such a terrible time.

So this clearly demonstrates how such a small detail can result in the potential loss of a domain.

You can check who your domain is registered to by doing a WHOIS search. You can do this here at the Nominet website:

http://www.nic.uk/

It's also worth checking if your web host has a disaster recovery plan in the event of such an act of god or company collapse.