- Welcome to The Journey.
Today we're gonna talk about how to not lose your domains.
Every year millions of domain names expire
and in too many cases, it happens unintentionally.
The owner will miss the renewal notices
and they do not realize that they are in the process
of losing their prized domain until it's too late
and it's actually a lot more common than you think.
In fact in 2015,
Google accidentally sold their domain name for $12.
Yeah, $12.
After realizing the mistake they canceled the order
but they still ended up paying more than $10,000
to get it back.
- It's probably one of the more frequent calls
that we get at GoDaddy.
So as the world's largest and trusted domain registrar,
who better to help you never lose a domain name again.
So we've got five ways to keep your domain name
safe and sound
and that starting off with registering that domain name
in your own account.
You wouldn't let someone else register their license plate
for your car, put their name on your house deed
or be a co-signer on your bank account.
The same logic applies for your domain name.
Whoever is listed as the organizational contact
for a domain name for all intents and purposes
owns the domain.
Any changes to a domain, including renewal or transfer
will need to use the contact information
associated with the domain name, so keep it current.
- And while domain theft is rare,
it is always better to be safe than sorry, I say that often.
It's more common that an employee sets up your domain
and email and then leaves the company
without leaving you access to your domain account
when it comes time to renew it
or make a change to the website.
That's gonna be a problem, right?
And don't worry, you can still give a trusted employee
or an IT person access to the domain
without giving them access to your actual registrar account.
And in that way for example,
your technical people can access your domain or hosting
to work on your website without having the ability
to remove those products from your account.
- Exactly.
And then you're gonna wanna use a strong password,
one that's nearly impossible to guess or hack
to gain access to your account.
And obviously, don't share it with anyone.
This goes for the email used to register the domain names
as well.
If someone is able to get into your email,
many times they have access to all your valuable accounts.
To make your life easier, use a password manager.
Sometimes even with strong passwords,
bad people can hack in through a tricky technique
like malware or phishing.
So enable two factor authentication
for an added layer of security.
- And we recommend auto renewal.
The problem with manual renewal
is that no matter how many email notifications
your registrar sends, you'll forget to renew your domains.
It's just a fact of life you guys.
And sometimes people are tempted to let it go
because they think they'll just be able to re-register
their domain again later on.
For starters, it doesn't work like that
and there's actually a domain lifecycle
that registrars have to follow
and once the domain name expires,
it goes into an expiration process
and that can take 70 to 80 days to play out
before their domain finally drops and when it does,
then if the domain has any marginal value whatsoever,
it will be snagged by the drop catchers within milliseconds.
- Pro tip, if you're able to,
renew your domains for several years in advance.
You'll have the peace of mind of not having to think about
renewal for a long time.
Even if you transfer your domain name
to another registrar later,
the registration time paid is not lost,
it just carries over to that new place.
- Our advice, lock it up.
Do everything that you can to prevent unauthorized changes
to your domain by putting a domain lock in place.
Yes, this exists and the process to transfer your domain
from one registrar to another
requires that the domain be unlocked.
So this provides a bit of you know, extra protection
should someone try to hijack your domain name.
However, this tool is only available for certain TLDs
and while your domain is locked,
you can still update your contact info
and make other changes to your domain settings
but again, if you wanna transfer your domain,
you must first unlock it.
- And lastly here, protect your registrar account
with additional security measures
like our Domain Privacy and Protection.
So this is an easy way to protect your personal information.
There is enough data on the whois domain record
for someone to be intentionally malicious.
Having your personal info available with your domain
is an open invitation to salespeople, con artists, spammers
and more, and they're especially easy to go after
owners of new domain names offering SEO services,
social media marketing, content optimization and more.
And even if you do use a separate email account,
hiding that information makes it that much more difficult
for someone to try to get key information
that can ultimately help them hijack your account.
But not only does it do this,
it does also a couple other cool things too
like prevent spam with a private email address
just for those domain inquiries,
protect against accidental credit card expiration
upon renewal and requires your approval
for via two factor authentication for vital changes
like deleting or transferring your domain name.
So it's a great extra added value of security
so you never lose your domain name.
- Alright, that's a wrap.
You just learned how to not lose your domains
but your journey doesn't have to end here.
We have over 200 videos for you to check out.
- And be sure to like, comment and subscribe,
but hey, we appreciate you watching.
This is The Journey.