Domains, Websites & Email Accounts, Oh My!

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Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wed Pro Business Solutions. I'm your host, Kristina Stubblefield, and today is a pretty serious topic in my opinion. And it should be be for you because most of the time when business owners realize, oh shit, I don't know my login or my access to my domain, my email server, it's normally at a time where there's problems, you're not receiving emails, your website will not load. And I'm going to be very honest with you, I've done this for a long time, more than 20 years. And as far as being involved with websites, domains, I've done it all the way back to the AOL communities.

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And I cannot tell you the number of times that someone has been referred to me or someone has found me because their website is not working, whether their domain did not auto renew, they're not receiving their emails, they have some kind of spam, someone hacked into their website. There's a list of reasons why it is so important that you pay attention to this episode, because almost always it's when that oh, shit moment happens that you need access to this. Now, if you have a company that manages your website, your domain renewals, your emails, awesome. But listen very closely, just because you have someone, someone you know, someone that was referred to you, even if it's me, you should still have access to how to log in to manage your domain, your website, your emails. It's really important and I'm going to explain why.

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And I probably have a more serious tone with this episode because usually every couple of months I am dealing with an urgent situation for someone because something's not working. Now, I don't know about you all, but my email is a lifeline for our business.

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Are there times where something's going to happen and a server is going to be down? Absolutely. You want 100% uptime? I think I've been very fortunate. It's 99.7% up time.

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However, when there's a problem that occurs, you need to be able to get a hold of someone. So I'm going to walk through this, and first I want to start with this. There are a few different parts to having a website, and I want to explain that for a minute. Okay, you have your domain name, www.whatever.com. Co, net dang near anything.

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Because now there's so many different options. That is your domain name. Normally, people pay one time a year for that to be renewed. Having it on auto renewal, awesome. However.

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If you have the unfortunate circumstance. Like so many of us have to. Having to get a new card because someone got your information or there's fraudulent activity. Now that sucks. But they issue a new card.

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Making sure you have a list of what goes out on the card is important and a whole nother topic. But it's really important when it has to do with your domain. Okay, so your website has your domain, you have to pay for hosting your space out there on the Internet. That could be monthly, it could be yearly. It all depends.

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Then normally when you have a website built, there's usually a one time charge for building it, set up, implementation, all of that. Then you could be in a plan of maintenance. That's another topic for not today. You could be in something that you pay on a regular basis. Now, one of the things that's not discussed a lot is the security.

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Most websites that people come out with now have SSL certificates built in, or it's an add on. You must have an SSL certificate on your website. Eventually, websites will not come up. They don't have an SSL. If that's not already happening.

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SSL puts the little lock in the top right corner of your browser address bar. Okay, so there's a few pieces to a website. Now, when we work with a client on the other side of our business, where we do done for your services, websites are one of the things that we offer. We explain that. Now, I'm not going to give you a test the next day.

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It's just the way we are transparent to explain the process and what is involved. Okay, so we've discussed those steps. Now, most people will just assume, you know, what word is in there that your email has. Well, that's my domain. Well, your email is ran on an email server.

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A lot of people are familiar now with Google Workspace.

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The other thing that you could be dealing with is your domain is hosted at one place. Your domain is purchased at one place. Let me change that. Your website. You use the company, and they hosted at this place, and then you use a separate email service.

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It could be. Google workspace, right? There could be three different logins. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It all depends on each individual business.

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I have people ask me about that all the time. Do I have to transfer my domain? If you do a website for me, and I take it a step further, and I do research and ask them, where is your domain hosted at? And then we have a conversation. What is the best case scenario?

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Security is a big thing when we talk about these items, domains, email, website, because you don't need to have trouble with any of those. The way people are doing business, they're doing their research online. They're making buying decisions. Sometimes before they even have a conversation or a meeting with you. It is critical that not only your website functions correctly as well as your domain, but also your email.

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And I feel like that's why I wanted to discuss this topic, because people don't realize their options. They don't know what they don't know. And I want to address this head on. Number one, you should know what company has your domain, and what I mean by has it. That doesn't mean it's in their name.

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What company did you purchase or what company manages your domain? Www.whatever.com, whatever. Okay, first and foremost, number two, do you have login information for that? Do they offer 24/7 assistance? Can you get a hold of somebody?

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Okay, with that being said, the other side of this, your domain for your business should be in your name. Not the companies, not the company's owner, not the company's employee, your name.

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Because if you ever have any kind of issue I'm not even going to give you examples. If you ever have any kind of issue, it must be in your damn name. If not, that other person owns it. And you've got an uphill battle to figure out anything different, and I'm going to leave it at that because my background is not legal. Although I did work for two attorneys offices.

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That is not my specialty, and I'm not going to discuss that part of it. But that isn't an uphill you want to climb. It's not a hill you want to worry about climbing. Let me get my wording, right? So what do you do if you don't know whose name your domain is, where the hell your domain is at?

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Well, I've got a solution. So in the Show Notes, where you're catching this video or on my website, you can get access to this link. That website is WHOIS SC. Let me spell that for you. W.

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S as in Sam, c as in Cat. Put in your information, you have to say that you're not a robot. And then you will get some information on your screen. And it might look like a foreign language, but what you want to look for is in the middle there's three sections with contact information. You want to make sure you either a see your information there, or what we recommend is domain privacy for almost every one of our clients.

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Why? Because you get hit up with spam all the time and all this and the other, you don't want to have any issues. So there could be actually domain privacy in place for a lot of people. That is not the case. But you should find there who the registrar.

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That's what it's called is there are several different there's a few different registrars, the main companies. Okay, then if you do not know your login to access where that domain is, you should take time to figure it out. Am I saying this is something you need to do tomorrow? Well, you make your own decision. I do think it is something that you want to tackle before you're in an oh shit moment and then you're scrambling.

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Because that a lot of times is where business owners find themselves. It is really unfortunate. So that's why I'm talking about it. So if you don't have login, a lot of times there's an 800 number or you can Google the company that's there, they will give you some direction. If you use a company to manage your domain or your website, I encourage you to reach out to them and just say, I would like to have on file my login information to access my account.

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Now, here's the other thing I'm going to tell you. Back in the day, a lot of times companies would have one main account and instead of an account being created for each company that they were working on, their website, their domain, whatever, they used one account. And what that means is if they give you login information for that account, you're getting access to all of their accounts in there. And that is not good. There's ways around it, but as I said, it's important to address it before there's a situation at hand.

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The other thing that I want to talk about, if I haven't scared you enough about domains and that is not the purpose of this, all I want to do is help educate people, because this isn't something that when you went out and got a website, you're like, oh, here's all these steps and here's all these explanations, it didn't happen. Now, if you work with me, you get enough explanation to keep you in the loop, but not to overwhelm you. So the next thing is, I've had so many people tell me my email sucks, I've got this with it, I've got that with it. It's clunky. It's a terrible interface to log into.

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I have heard it all. And you can have other email solutions. A lot of people are going to Google Workspace. I personally use Google Workspace. Don't let someone tell you any different.

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And if they are telling you different, you need to get to the bottom of it because there might be something with your domain or your account that could be set up the old school way or maybe isn't set up the way it should be. And again, I've been doing this a long time. I'm not someone to sit and say, oh, this person doesn't do it right, and that person doesn't do it right. No. Here's the bottom line for me.

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I always conduct a business with the best interests of my clients. Whether it's their domain, their email, their website, their social media, access, their content, whatever it is at the forefront of it is the best for my client. Now, things have changed over the years, and a lot of times I have people come to me, their domain is at the same place it was when they purchased it 15 years ago. Things change. So I just want people to have clarity with where their domain, their website, their emails are, because that's going to make it a lot easier.

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If you want to make a change, you want to switch something up, or if something isn't working correctly, for you to get to the bottom of it. Lastly, here's what I want to say security. There is different things involved with domains. As I mentioned, there is domain privacy protection. Just depends on what company you use, what your options are.

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But as I mentioned at the beginning, an SSL certificate is really important for those out there that use WordPress. Keeping up with those updates, those security for the plugins and your website as well. Really important if you have WordPress. Definitely want somebody to manage that for you because it needs to be kept up with. So if it's something that you're not for sure what you have going on or okay, this was a lot to take in with this episode.

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I've put together a checklist, use it as a guide to go off of, and I know people are busy with events, but this is something that should get put somewhere on your to do list that doesn't constantly get pushed off in another year go by. Because technology is wonderful when it works, but there can be times where things happen and having the right information access, username password, pins, authorization codes, whatever that is, to be able to get to a solution, a resolution as soon as possible is key. And just in the past few months, some of these hurdles is what I call it, that I've helped clients get over.

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I shake my head because they didn't know any different. No one ever explained to them they didn't have their own access, and it really made it a not so good scenario for addressing some of the issues that went on. And by listening to this episode, I hope you're able to keep that from happening to you. I hope you never have a single problem for that. I've personally had some issues here or there, nothing major, knock on wood, and I don't wish that for anybody.

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But what I want you to do is have all of the information so that you can get to a quicker resolution. I know this isn't one of those fun yay, what an amazing episode.

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But sometimes in business it's so important to get the correct information. And this is something that I consider as part of the foundation for a business. It's really important to have this information. So make sure you get that checklist and I hope it helps you make sure you have the information that you may need for your business. I know this was probably a lot to take in.

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Don't forget, make sure you're in my free Facebook group. There's links with this video or in the show notes. As always, you can go to KristinaStubblefield.com and get access to the Freedom Facebook group as well as the guide that I mentioned earlier. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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See you.