Hello Forum,
A friend and I are just setting up small web design business,
and are wondering who we should recomend host our customer web sites?
Ive used UK2.net a couple of times for personal sites and found their Web forwarding to be quite good.
So I was also wondering if it was acceptable practice to put all my customers sites on the same server and mask their real URL's?

Tim.

well the masking would be done by the domain reg company
i would strongly reccomend everyone not to have their domains and hosting with the same company

im not sure why you are talking about url masking anyways
why would you have to mask their urls
do you not have a hosting reseller account to host their sites - this would definately hurt your customers search engine rankings etc

Sorry just edited message..UK2.Net provide a service called WebDiversion, so when someone types in a customers URL, say for instance web address www.spanners.com they get directed to the website on my server www.myserver.com/spanners/index.htm
but all that appears in the address bar on the browser is www.spanners.com

i thought this method might save a lot of time and money!?

do the search engines not like this then?

well what happens to http://www.myserver.com/spannersacou...ucts/index.php - is the url masked in the toolbar to spanners.com

basically - if all of their pages are masked to the one url, their search engine presence would be poor

id reccomend getting a reseller account and hosting their domains with enom, registerfly, godaddy etc

looking at reseller acounts now. thanks

if you want advice or whatever on the matter let me know

yes I woulndnt mind, theres a lot of information to take in,

So these companies will provide me with domain names to sell on, as and when a when customer needs em. All for a flat monthly fee.?

no, not for a flat monthly fee
you pay per domain per year

I see the resellers also host.

Ok. Im not sure about this at all.
Do I choose a one company to supply me with domain names
and a Seperate company to store my customers websites?

its just that earlier you said.
"i would strongly reccomend everyone not to have their domains and hosting with the same company"

maybe im getting confused...its late in england

yes - perhaps not everyone would agree with this

the problem being that most there is a lot of hosting companies particularly in the uk who register domains on your behalf - you have no absolutely control over the domains. They also usually charge for extra things like masking which should be free.

Many of these companies register the customer name as the owner but retain themselves as technical and admin contact. This means that they have control over the domain. They should not do this.
For example, i designed a website for my friends dads company about 2-3 years ago. The company kept themselves as technical and admin contact so whenever i tried to transfer the domain to another register it was falling in deaf ears - especially in this instance as the company had been bought over and then went bust. All calls to the company went straight to an answering machine and even the domain register watchdog couldnt help. I only recently got the domain back for them as the domain expired.

This, i admit, was unfortunate and not too common. However, you should always retain 100% full rights to your domain. Its just common sense.

Another problem is this. Say the hosting company has your domain name, like above. Now say that you come into a dispute with the company - you could be in the right or wrong. What do you think would happen if they said that you owe them say $50.00 in hosting fees and you said you were not going to pay. what do you think would happen when you requested a domain transfer to another domain company??

Recommendations are to get your domains registered at a registrar like namecheap.com then host with a host, it is my opinion that if you can avoid it purchase your domains else where cause I have seen far to many sad stories about hosts retaining the domain name to force payment.

Though I offer domain names I recommend namecheap if you know how to manage your own domain names.

Ok.. I see the point,

i knew transfering a domain name aint as easy as 1 email or a phone call. But if im using two seperate companies, one to buy and control the domain names from
and another to host the web sites, how then do I attach the domain name to the index file?

I dont as yet know how to manage domain names, is it difficult to do?

infact - transferring domain names is that easy - as long as the domains at a good company

i reccomend doing a lot more reading on the subject at domain and hosting info sites before you start doing this for customers

yes your probably right or I should give my partner a kick up the backside to learn about it as i seem to be doing the lot at the mo..

thanks for the advice.

what exactly are you doing anyways
are you both web designers - or is one the coding guy one the graphics guy
whats your website address

Ok... I got a URL.
its a list of general stuff that Ive done.
and im the most experienced of us both.
wish us luck

www.inzane.plus.com

some of your flash is quite good

thanks. just need some jobs to come in. and hope we dont get caught out on the bits we dont know yet.