How To Look Up Domain Names

In the recent debate on how evil Network Solutions is, I neglected to give you the non-evil alternatives.

JumpDomain Whois

The easiest thing to do is go to an old registrar that quit answering my emails so I moved all of my domain names away from them. They had non-existant customer support, so I’m sure they won’t mind us using their tools.

https://domains.jumpdomain.com/whois/whois.cgi

Go to the URL above and put in your domain name. Hit Submit Query. It will also return all of the DNS info. Bookmark that page. I use it all the time. It’s by far the easiest and fastest way to look up available domain names without getting into trouble.

Whois?

First, if you are a Mac user (and I won’t get into that religious debate now), if you go into your utilities folder, there is an application called “Network Utility”. If you open that up, you’ll see all of the tools listed across the top. Click on “Whois”.

You can type in the domain name you want to check on and click on the “Whois” button. It will return all of the DNS info for that domain name or it will say “No match for…” the domain name you are looking for.

Terminal Whois on a Mac

If you are brave, you can open the Terminal application and type in “whois” followed by the domain name. That will also give you the DNS info.

Posted in DNS |

Wikipedia Says Network Solutions Sucks

I really appreciate comments. I really do. I love the interaction with people who use this site. Most of all, I love being right and crushing the opposition.

Network Solutions is waiting for you to search for an available domain name using their site.

With that as background, I got a comment or two from Jack Carlson, who, again, I really appreciate for commenting. He defended NetSol and I had to question if I was right about their practices or not. I know what happened to me and a client of mine. Maybe they saw the error of their ways and changed their practices. I needed to reevaluate.

I checked Wikipedia (and since it’s on the Internet, it must be right of course,) and they also had references that all seem to check out. I think this section below is probably true. It matches my experiences and my client’s. Please click through and read the whole thing.

What do you think? Have you ever had a good or a bad experience with NetSol? Please leave a comment and we’ll all battle it out in the never ending search for the truth.

Network Solutions – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Controversy over domain name front running

There is evidence that there are parties subscribing to this information which are buying some of these domains within milliseconds of them being de-registered.

Network Solutions Inc offer a search engine which permits users to find out if a domain name is available for purchase.[18] Unregistered domain names entered into this search engine are then speculatively reserved by Network Solutions. [18] It should be noted this “reservation” can be removed by anyone immediately by contacting Network Solutions customer service hotline, or it will automatically unreserve within 4 days, allowing the domain to be freely registered anywhere. Also, visitors searching for domain names on their website allow the reservation when they click “OK” on the Reservation Confirmation dialog box. Clicking cancel will prevent the domain name from being reserved.

On January 8, 2008 Domain Name Wire published a story alleging that Network Solutions practices domain name front running.[18] “If you try to register a domain at Network Solutions, but decide not to register it, you won’t be able to register it anywhere else,” the article says.[18] “Network Solutions registers the domain in its company name with the words ‘This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com’.”[18] Circle ID reported on January 8, 2008 that Jonathon Nevett, Vice President of Policy at Network Solutions and one of the seven members of the ICANN community who was consulted by the ICANN committee looking at domain tasting abuse,[19] had offered a response to the news story stating Network Solution’s policy.[20] The policy was “a security measure to protect our customers,” said Nevett.[20] “When a customer searches for an available domain name at our website, but decides not to purchase the name immediately after conducting the search,” Nevett added, “after the search ends, we will put the domain name on reserve.”[20] Nevett said that if the domain was “not purchased within 4 days, it will be released back to the registry and will be generally available for registration.”[18]

Posted in web host |

Last Edit for Web Site Starter Kit

My wife went through the draft with her pen and marked it all up. Anything that she didn’t understand is being rewritten. Some of my organization wasn’t clear, so I’m making that a little clearer. We want to make Web Site Starter Kit the best it can be, which means clear, concise communication.

They haven’t quite released Wordpress 2.7 yet, so I’m still rocking the RC1 version of it. They say they will release the final version tomorrow. A few more screenshots today and it should be good to go.

Web Site Starter Kit should be released by the end of the week.

Posted in web site build |

Do You Own Your Domain Name?

A lot of times, a developer will register your domain name for you as a service and charge you the fee every year to renew it. That’s great if they are honorable people and there are no problems.

The real owner of any domain name is the Administrative Contact in the whois record

If your developer is listed as that admin contact, then they are the legal owner. Again, this is nice that they are helping you out, but be aware that you are vulnerable to having your domain name held hostage, or worse, stolen from you.

This is the “whois” that I use. It’s from an old registrar that I no longer use because they quit responding to all communication from me. They were horrible. But, I still use their whois look up because they are no flashing ads or captchas to slow me down. I’ll share their secret look up page with you.

Check who owns your domain name here.

If you are not listed for your domain name, take steps to change that or have it changed. Make sure that your email address is also listed. If someone hijacks your email account, they can have your password sent to them, log in and change the admin contact to themselves and steal your domain name.

Send me email if you want any help with checking on this.

Posted in web host |

How To Plan A Web Site

No matter what kind of web site you are creating, no matter what size or what content, it’s always best to plan out what you need to do before you do anything.

I always start with a planning document. It can be formal or informal. It just needs to have all of the information you need in a way that makes sense to you.

It's always best to plan out what you need to do before you do anything.

Once you have a handle on the technical issues, which will take way more time to explore, the next step is a site map. This might be called the site architecture or site plan. There are various names for it.

You need to have a list of every page on the site and a description of the content for every page. You also need to know the relationships of each page, which will be defined with the menus.

Most sites have a list of things that are exactly the same on each page, so we call this the template. These things would be the header and footer, the sidebars, and the logo. Whatever else you might have can be put into the template.

If your site has nothing common on each page, then you’re better off creating them individually. You still need to make the site map.

You can make this list as a text outline or as a graphic with little boxes and lines running between them. Use whatever tools you have that make sense to you.

Posted in web site build |

How To Transfer a Domain Name

I just got a new domain name. I actually bought it and had to transfer it to my own registrar.

In order to transfer domain names these days, you have to log into your account, get a couple of codes, a transaction code and a security code, from your domain name registrar and make the request to transfer. The codes are emailed to you so they can confirm that you have access to the email account listed in your registration.

Usually the transfer of a domain name is pretty straight forward, as long as you jump through the hoops they set up for you.

That works if you are the owner that you are transferring from. If you are getting the domain from another person, then they have to get that EPP code and send it to you. You have to put the EPP code into your account and that will complete the transfer request.

Then, the fun part is waiting for the other registrar to get around to sending you the actual domain name.

If you are trying to get a domain name out of Network Solutions, you have to make a phone call and talk to their high pressure salesman, support person. After they try to sell you on staying, they will finally allow the transfer. If there is any way possible to not have anything to do with Network Solutions, stay as far away from them as possible.

Usually the transfer of a domain name is pretty straight forward, as long as you jump through the hops they set up for you. The hassle is actually for your own good. (I sound like my mother.) It it supposed to make it harder for bad guys to steal domain names away from you.

The latest scam that I heard of is if they get your email account log in, which is sometimes not that hard to do (Sarah Palin), then they can have your registrar send your password as a forgotten password. With your email account and your registrar password, they initiate the transfer, send the codes, approve the transfer, and wait for your domain name. Then you get an email asking you for $2000 to get your domain name back.

Keep your email account secure. Use obscure passwords, like my email password is w958hd)… Ha! Did you really think I would give you my password?

Posted in web site build |

2. Find a Web Hosting Company

There are a ton of web hosting companies out there. You will probably not get the traffic that requires some huge, bullet proof servers and bandwidth. You’ll be fine with a shared server and a lot of bandwidth.

Small business web hosting has become so easy and common that it’s a commodity these days. You want to look for price first, but the determining factor now are reliability, customer service and ease of use.

Reliability
When I first started to publish a fan site at survivor.com, I was getting a huge amount of traffic. I bought space at PowWeb, who I use now, and was fairly happy with them for the most part. They advertised “unlimited bandwidth”, so we were cool with the huge traffic spike every Thursday night.

Customer Service
That is, until it all stopped. One day, they decided that I had too many connections within a specific time, so they just turned it off. I had no site. I was furious. Of course, I found this out after I got home from work and their office was closed. I was screwed.

When I did contact them, they pointed out some fine print in that “unlimited bandwidth” section of the terms and conditions. They could shut me off any old time they wanted to with no warning. I was still furious.

Ease of Use
I shopped around and decided it was time to get a dedicated server with a specified amount of bandwidth. I was making good enough money to pay for it and it seemed like it was time to take the plunge. I had a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. I signed the year long contract and had the server set up. I found that the interface was horrible. I couldn’t manage the domain names the way I wanted to set them up. I didn’t have access to the MySQL settings. There were all sorts of little nuisances that I didn’t have with the shared server.

I was shocked at how hard it was to manage this thing. I couldn’t do half the things that I could with the shared server. I canceled the contract and asked for my money back. It took them 60 days to get that back to me.

I’m sure that there are better dedicated servers out there, just like there are worse shared servers. The key is to get in and play around with whatever you buy. Make sure that you can do what to do with it and that it’s easy. They have gotten much better today, so you shouldn’t have any problems, but you might.

After that fiasco, I went back to PowWeb, since I had paid for a year of their service. It seems that as soon as I decided that, they changed their terms of service and were promoting the amount of bandwidth they include. They no longer can decide arbitrarily, but they have a specified amount of bandwidth you can use. They tell you how much you’ve used and when you might run out.

I feel much better about being told that I have a “Monthly limit: 15400.00 GB” than it being “Unlimited”. That makes me a little nervous. (I just checked and they are advertising “Unlimited” again. Hmmmm…) Since I went back to them, they’ve given me absolutely no trouble at all. They’ve been 100% reliable. I’ve been able to do everything I need to. I’ve recommended them to clients who are also happy with them.

I would recommend PowWeb 100%.

There are other good, cheap hosts out there. I have nothing against any of them. Check them out. Make sure you can do what you want and that they give you a money back guarantee.

DO NOT DO ANY BUSINESS WITH NETWORK SOLUTIONS!.

Posted in web site build |

1. Register A Domain Name

DO NOT USE NETWORK SOLUTIONS FOR ANYTHING, EVER!

Registering a domain name is pretty cheap and easy. There are a couple pitfalls that could kill you if you’re not careful, but if you watch out for them, it’ll all be fine.

First, you should understand how the whole DNS thing works. You don’t need to, but it helps to know what you’re doing.

Manage Your Own Domain Name

You might have a technical guy handling all of this computery stuff for you, and that’s cool, but you need to make sure that you have the domain name registered in your name, on your account. You need to have control over the domain name registration as much as you need to have the key to the front door of your house. You need to have the userID and password to the account that manages the domain name.

I’ve heard of people having their developer manage it for them, then running into a conflict with the developer some how and the domain name gets held for ransom. You don’t need to do much with the domain name registration, but when you need to make that one critical change to move to a new web host or a new developer, then you need the keys to that kingdom.

If you set up the registration account, then make sure that your email is the one on file with them. When you share the password with the developer, so he can manage it for you, he’s able to change the password. The only way to protect yourself from that is if you can hit that “Forget your password” link and have the new password emailed to you. Make sure you own everything. Don’t let anyone else help you out with this one. Do it yourself.

Make Sure You Can Transfer It

The other area where you can be vulnerable is with the ability to transfer your domain name to another registrar. The reason that Network Solutions is so evil is that they make you actually call them and listen to a sales pitch before they will release your domain name for transfer. It should be a simple process of logging in, asking for the transfer, responding to some emails and being on your way. It should take 5 minutes to transfer.

My nightmare experience was with JumpDomain. They were great in the old days. They were the cheapest that I could find and the admin interface was powerful adn easy to use. I registered probably 100 domain names with them over the years that I was with them. I recommended them to friends also. (Sorry!)

The trick to transfers is that the registrar has to approve it. They have to send you a code for each domain name. This rule was put in place to prevent unauthorized transfers by bad guys. I appreciate that, but the system better work.

Then, one dark and stormy night, I had a problem with one of the domain names. I opened a help desk ticket on it, asking them to fix the error on their end. No answer. I opened another ticket. No answer. Waited and waited. Sent email. I looked up their WHOIS contact info and sent emails. No response. Over all, I waited a couple months for any kind of response. I did some research and decided to move them all to GoDaddy. I had about 40 names to move at that point.

I finally did some research and found that they were using Enom for their registration. I emailled, then called Enom and explained the situation. They finally emailed me the codes and I was able to transfer them to GoDaddy. Total time to transfer: 3 months.

I learned that prices change and you should always shop around instead of just renewing every year. I learned that the registrar can kill you if they want to, so pick wisely. Admin interfaces can improve, so get the easy to use interface. If you don’t like it, transfer to somewhere else.

GoDaddy seems to be the best and the cheapest, right now. That may change in the next month or two. Network Solutions is horrible. Never, ever, use them. Enom was helpful to me, but they have had some questionable stories told about them. Ask a friend. Ask on line. Ask in forums. Ask me.

Shop around and don’t get bit.

Posted in web site build |

How To Set Up A Small Business Web Site

So you think you need a web site for your small business. You’re right. If you don’t have one by now, you’re behind the curve. If you have one that sucks, you need to make it better.

Don’t worry, we’ll walk you through the steps to get one up and running. The overview of the process contains the following steps:

1. Register a domain name.
2. Find a web hosting company.
3. Set up the domain name to point at the web host.
4. Design the web site.
5. Develop the web site.
6. Post them to the web host.
7. Maintain it.

There are a lot of companies out there promising to do it all for you for cheap, but be careful of who you give your money to and what you get stuck with. There are deals and there are dangers.

The first rule of web site development is DO NOT DO ANY BUSINESS WITH NETWORK SOLUTIONS!. They are evil. They will suck you into a black hole of fees and never let you go. They are the La Brea tar pits of the Internet.

Each of the steps above has it’s own page dedicated to it and they are many other resources out there on the web for information about each subject.

Posted in web site build |

How Does DNS Work?

The Internet is a bunch of computers that all send little packets of data back and forth between each other. The computer that you are reading this on is one of them.

Each computer must have some sort of identifier so that it knows where to send the data to and so that other computer knows where to send it back to. These identifiers are called “IP Addresses”. IP stands for “Internet Protocol”. The address itself looks like this: 63.74.159.145. I’m sure you’ve seen something like that somewhere before.

But when you want a web page, you don’t tell your web browser to go get data from an IP address. You use a “domain name”, like “www.google.com” or “www.walton.com”. That domain name needs to be “resolved”. It’s got to be translated into an IP address so the data knows where to go. That all happens behind the scenes.

I’ll go through all the steps that happen so you’ll know what you need to do to get your own domain name set up without being taken advantage up by low life registrars. More about them later.

When you type in a domain name into your browser and hit enter, your computer goes and asks another server, called a “DNS” or “Domain Name Server” what the IP address is for that domain name. When your computer knows the IP address, it sends off the request and receives that answer back. In this case, the request is for a file that creates the web page in your browser.

Before I go farther, two terms you need to know are “client” and “server”. Each is a computer that can talk to other computers. The difference is that a “client” sends a request, while a “server” responds to requests. One asks and the other answers. Any computer can be either, or both, a client and a server.

Web pages are only one type of request, but probably the most common type. There are time servers that only respond with the time. There are Instant Message servers that sit between two people and send IMs to each of them as they are received. DNS responds to domain names with IP addresses.

So how does that DNS know what IP address is correct? From the “Root Servers”, of course! (No, they don’t serve roots.) There are 13 root servers that contain all of the information for each domain name that has been registered. Yes, they are pretty critical.

When a request for a domain name is received by a root server, it only knows which DNS to go ask for the IP address. DNS servers (Yes, the S is redundant, but who wants to call them “DN servers”?) are also called “name servers”.

Too many technical names? I think I got them all out so I can stop now.

The DNS are located all over. Anyone can have one. I have one here. Anyone can provide the service for you if you really wanted. Now, the DNS manages the relationship between the domain name and the IP address. Root servers know which DNS to ask and the DNS knows the IP. There are local DNS for each computer that needs to look up stuff. There are DNS that have authority over specific domain names.

The root servers get their information from “domain name registrars”. (That’s not really a technical name, so it doesn’t count.) You’ll hear people talking about their “registrar”. GoDaddy.com is one. Networksolutions.com is also one, but they are evil, so NEVER, EVER use them for anything. Did I mention that before?

A registrar will charge you some money per year to register your name. They usually provide a web interface so that you can manage what the name servers are for that domain name. They might provide the DNS for you and they’ll let you manage that too. The strength of that interface and what it will allow you to do is very important.

So, to review, you type in a domain name into your web browser. Your web browser asks the local DNS what the IP address is. If the local DNS doesn’t know, it asks the Root Server, which then tells it which DNS has authority for that name. Your local DNS then asks the DNS with authority, which then responds with the correct IP address. The web browser then sends off the web page request to the proper web server to get the web page.

All of that happens in the blink of an eye, which is a technical term for “under 200 milliseconds”.

Posted in DNS |

Do Not Search For Domains Names Using Network Solutions

They will grab any name you search for. I’ve had a client go look for names for a new site we were building. They had some ideas and wanted to check them out. 2 days later, they came back and said that the one they wanted was available, but was now taken.

We're Waiting...

That means that we had to pay $36 a year to register instead of $8 at GoDaddy, who we wanted to use. It cost us $28 more just because she used Network Solutions to search for available domain names.

In the past, I used a great small service for registration. They were great until they quit responding to emails and their help desk. I’ll tell that horror story in another post, but they did have a nice, easy to use “whois”, the tool you can use to look up domain name registrations. There’s no captcha. No advertising. There’s just the form.

If you want to look up domain names, use this WHOIS form.

Posted in web site build |

Don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions

Don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions. Use any other registrar. Not only do they charge you 4 times what most other registrars charge, moving your domain name to another registrar is almost impossible.

We had a client who had a name registered at Network Solutions. I showed them the difference in cost and customer support, so they wanted to move to GoDaddy.

La Brea tar Pits, Where You Get Sucked In And Never Get Out

First, they needed to submit a request. Then the request had to be approved. You have to actually call them to have the transfer approved. In this call, they try very hard to get you to stay. This isn’t a technical call or a call to protect you from someone stealing your name, it’s a sales call, a hard ball sales call.

When they finally do approve your request, it’s 5 days later, after multiple emails and a sales call.

Customer service is another issue, but this one is more subjective. They generally are not helpful and it takes twice as long to get things figured out with their support.

Bottom line, no matter what, don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions.

Posted in web site build |