When a website or business email stops working, the cause is often not the website at all. It is the domain name: the address everything else hangs off. Domain problems are rarely dramatic, and they are almost always avoidable. Here are the seven mistakes we see most often, and what to do about each one.
1. The domain is registered in someone else’s name
A web designer, an IT contractor or a former employee registers the domain “to keep things simple”, and it ends up in their name and on their account. If they move on, stop replying or the relationship sours, you cannot renew, transfer or change anything.
The business should be the registrant, with its own login at the registrar. Anyone helping you can be added as a contact or user. If you are not sure who holds yours, look it up and check the registrant details before you need to.
2. The contact email goes to a mailbox nobody reads
Renewal notices, transfer requests and verification messages are sent to the contact address on the domain. If that is a former staff member, a retired mailbox or an address that sits on the domain itself, the warnings arrive nowhere. Use a mailbox that is monitored and does not depend on the domain working, and review it whenever staff change.
3. Renewal depends on one expiring card
Auto-renew is only as good as the payment method behind it. A card that has expired or been replaced means a failed renewal, a short grace period and then a domain that stops resolving. Turn auto-renew on, keep a current card, and put the expiry date in a calendar as a backup. Renewing for several years at once removes the yearly risk altogether.
4. Nobody knows where DNS is managed
The domain registrar, the place your DNS records live and your website host are often three different companies. Changes made in the wrong place seem to do nothing, and records get duplicated or contradict each other. Write down, in one place, who the registrar is, which name servers are in use and who the DNS provider is. When you change one of them, the others need to be told.
5. Changing records without a record of the old ones
Moving a website or switching email provider usually means editing DNS. If the old records are not copied down first, there is no way back, and records you did not know were needed, such as those for a booking system, an invoicing tool or a verification token, quietly vanish. Export or screenshot the full zone before touching anything.
6. Forgetting the time-to-live
Every DNS record has a time-to-live, which controls how long the rest of the internet remembers the old answer. A long value means a change can take hours to be seen everywhere. A day before a planned change, lower it to a few minutes, make the change, confirm it, then raise it again.
7. Leaving the domain unlocked and unwatched
Most registrars offer a transfer lock and two-factor login. Without them, a stolen password can lead to a transferred domain, which is a serious and slow thing to undo. Turn the lock on, enable two-factor login on the registrar account and use a unique password.
A quick domain checklist
- The business is the registrant, and you can log in to the registrar.
- The contact email is monitored by a real person.
- Auto-renew is on, the card is current and the expiry date is in a calendar.
- You know who runs the registrar, DNS and hosting, and where each is managed.
- A copy of the full DNS record set is saved somewhere safe.
- Transfer lock and two-factor login are on.
Not sure where yours stands?
Our free website health check looks at your name servers and email records in about 15 seconds. For a person to go through the domain, DNS and email set-up for you, ask for a free site review, or see how we look after website and IT management. You can also request a call or email [email protected]. We reply the same day, 6am to 9pm, seven days a week.
