Every month or two I help a client out with reclaiming their domain name from a previous hosting company, a disgruntled employee, or an uncooperative previous webmaster. It’s an uphill challenge that isn’t necessary to go through, and rarely has a happy ending.

I am blogging about domain registration today because I helped a client today try to get their domain transfered from their previous hosting company, but was ultimately unsuccessful. They went through months of trying to get an approval on the transfer from the previous host.  They ended up registering another domain name to avoid the problem. It is a very unfortunate situation, but is completely preventable.

You can protect yourself from this hassle quite easily. Simply have your domain registered in your name, under your control. All OCS Solutions hosting customers enjoy this, and if you order your domain name from OCS Domains, you can fully control your domain – including changing your registration information (WHOIS), nameservers, DNS, and other vital data concerning your domain name anytime you wish.  It’s under your complete control.

If you are an OCS hosting customer and had us register your domain for you, we’ll be glad to make changes for you at any time – just contact us.  However, we can also put your domain in your own domain registration account that allows you to fully control nameservers, DNS, WHOIS info, and even transfer the domain to another registrar.  If you’d like us to enable this domain registration control center for your domain(s), just let us know.  We’ll be glad to do it at no charge!

If you don’t host with us, please make sure you’re in full control of your domain.  If you can’t change your own nameservers or WHOIS information, contact your hosting company to see how you can do that if you wanted to.  It’s an important piece of information you need to know to manage your internet property address.