Blacknight Solutions Suggests Regular Maintenance For Your Domain Portfolio

March 29, 2011 - PRLog -- Carlow based registrar Blacknight Solutions would like to remind you to care of your domain names.

Many businesses do not give their domain names (and related services) enough importance and attention is only paid to the domain when a serious issue arises. The registrar frequently sees businesses lose (or lose control over) their domain names in ways that could have been easily prevented.

Michele Neylon of Blacknight explains: “We've seen all sorts of "interesting" issues arise due to people not paying attention A lot of people spend more time worrying about getting their car serviced than they do checking that their domains are setup correctly. By setup, in this context, I mean:

- registered to the correct entity (common problem being that the domain is registered to a business partner / founder and never actually switched to the corporate entity)

- the contact details are correct

- the email and other contact points that the registrar (or registry in the case of many ccTLDs) have is up to date

They should also ensure that domains are registered for the maximum amount of time possible.”

Domain Names are an asset. Just as a physical space occupied by a business would be maintained, the same must be done with its Internet space. It would be unheard of to leave a corporate building unlocked or let the lease expire however it happens every day to corporate domain names. Domains are registered using email addresses that aren’t frequently used so renewal notices go unseen, credit cards expire without being updated or it is assumed “someone else” is maintaining domains. All of these factors contribute to the loss of domain names and the loss of domain names means the loss of business assets.

There's also the issue of domains being "held to ransom" by designers, developers or consultants. You may think this wont affect to you, but it happens all the time. Companies delegate the registration and care of their domain names to employees who then register them under their own names. Often this is at the request of the company. However when the employee leaves the company, the domain name remains in their control and the company is not able to change that.  Also, under the contracts with many of the registries (and by extension registrars) the registries do reserve the right to pull a registration if the contact data is not correct. Therefore, it is preferable that the business owner register the domain with an ICANN accredited registrar under their own name whenever possible.

Blacknight would like to emphasise that by performing regular checks to assure that your registrations are set to renew, domain names are registered under correct name, credit card information is up to date and contact information is current most accidental domain loss can be stopped. Make these checks a part of regular business maintenance and protect your most valuable assets.

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Blacknight are Ireland's largest domain name registrar and hosting provider. The company is 100% Irish owned and provides a comprehensive range of Windows and Linux based hosting and domain solutions to companies worldwide.