Where is My Domain?

Last weekend was the cut off date where our old servers who will shortly be off to server heaven, they have been good to us so we're sure it's heaven. Last weekend saw a large chunk of time devoted to transferring files, reconfiguring config files so that database connections work and testing sites on the new hardware. All fairly standard stuff.

But there are still a few issues. When we create a website for a client in most cases we host the website. In most cases we also provide the client's domain and host the site for 1 year as part of the package. We purchase the domain from our standard registrar and register it in  our client's name so that they are the owners but we have easy access to do any DNS jiggery pokery that is required. That's the way we like it as it makes our life easier and we guarantee that if clients wish to take the domain elsewhere we will immediately do the necessary at our end to make this happen, after all it's their domain not ours, if they have paid their invoices of course :).

The server transfer flagged up one major issue. We have clients who look after their own domains, even though we do the hosting, and they needed to change the nameservers to our new ones or give us access so we can do it for them. In very simplified form you can think of nameservers as the address book of the Internet, they tell someone searching for a domain where they live so a browser sends requests to the right server - apologies to students of computing as I know this is not entirely accurate. If those weren't changed then a search for yoursite.co.uk would go to a server that was no longer there - so no website to see. Problem is some of our clients had no idea where they have their domain registered and/or how to login to their domain control panel. We still have 4 clients in that boat and even though we have told them who the domain is registered with, there's nothing we can do until they request a login.

Luckily so far our old server management company 34sp.com have not switched off the old server even though it should have died by now so the sites are still live but we know that will change very shortly and are fearful that our clients will have no website for a time. Please get a move on with the login requests!!