December 1, 2020 / in How To, Information Technology, Video / by Jason Terry
In this Tech Tip for businesses, I wanted to talk about the importance of understanding the pieces and parts that make your website and email stay up and running. I’ve dealt with countless situations where an expired credit card, or someone no longer working for a company, has ultimately caused these important systems to fail.
Two of the most common registrars are GoDaddy.com and NetworkSolutions.com. My personal preference is to use GoDaddy because of the functionality their administrative control panel provides.
There are countless web hosting companies out there. At Blue Gurus, we only do WordPress powered websites. As a result, I only recommend web hosts that cater specifically to WordPress website hosting. My favorite for the last few years has been Flywheel. (https://getflywheel.com)
The most common email hosting companies are Microsoft Office365 and Google Workspace (formerly GSuite). Either solution works well based on your company needs, line of business applications, integration requirements, etc. For Blue Gurus, I use Google Workspace.
Make sure you can log into your domain registrar account. If you can’t that’s a huge problem that you need to figure out ASAP. Once you are logged in, make sure to check the domain contact details (specifically that the person listed as the administrative contact for your domain still works for your company and that their email address still works.) Also, make sure the credit card on file for automatic domain renewals is not expiring within the next 6 months.
If it will be expiring soon, set an important calendar reminder a month before it expires to log back into your registrar and update the credit card info. PRO TIP: GoDaddy let’s you pay with a PayPal account. Set up a PayPal account for your payments, and then all you have to do is update the credit card information behind your PayPal account before the card expires.
Make sure you can log into the payment account for your web hosting company. Make sure that the email address on file is appropriate and still working. Finally, make sure you credit card is not going to expire any time soon… if it will be expiring, set a calendar reminder to deal with this a month before it expires.
Make sure you can log into your administrative account for your email provider. Make sure the payment info on file is current and won’t be expiring before your next renewal date.
My good friend Tony Sheets reached out to thank me for doing this public service announcement and sent me a blog post he wrote (a few years ago, but still 100% relevant…)
Why you should never give up control of your registration or DNS.
I've been lucky enough to get to work with Jason for the last six years, and I don't think it's possible to say too many good things about him or my experience!
The guys at Blue Gurus are not only some of the best at what they do, but they're a joy to work with in an on-going fashion! If you're in charge of the online presence at your business and you need a face lift to your website OR a more user friendly back end to the site, you shouldn't hesitate to reach out to Blue Gurus!
Caleb Pierce
President at Get Smarter Prep
