Your website's fully qualified domain name is essential for people visiting your website. However, few people realize that the normal way of registering your domain name has risks that can easily be avoided.
Your domain name is registered in three places. Each of these has to be operational. If one of them does not work, your website might as well not exist, because nobody can visit it.
Your domain name is registered in the top level domain (TLD, typically .com) by a registrar. The registrar puts in an entry pointing to a domain name server (DNS server). This domain server in turn has the real address of your website.
You now have contracts in place for three different services, if you also include hosting your webserver. Typically you would have your hosting company handle all these three contracts.
The risk is that your hosting company goes out of business. Your webserver will then stop working, and you need to switch over to another hosting company. To switch over, you will need to update your DNS server or you registration at the TLD. However, the company that would allow you to do this has just gone out of business. You are stuck!
Less dramatic, but equally frustrating, is the situation where the companies customer service has gone very bad. If you need customer service to switch to another hosting company, you could experience a major delay.
To avoid this risk, it is a better idea to have separate companies handle your domain name and your hosting. By taking DNS hosting to a different party, you have much increased flexibility should your hosting company or registrar break down.
To setup or move a domain, you will need a contract with a DNS hosting provider. I am using dnsmadeeasy.com, but there are quite a few others.
Before you register a new domain, you should insert the records that point to the webserver to the DNS hosting provider. Depending on your hosting situation there is a set of records to use. Your webhosting company should be able to show you that information. Once you have properly hosted your domain, you can instruct the registrar to use your new domain name servers. Contrary to popular belief, most registrars update their records almost immediately.
Should your webhosting company stop with providing you with the service you require, you can simply switch over to another hosting company by just changing the DNS records. You do not need your webhosting company for that.
At our Google Adwords managment fees are related to how well your advert performs. That way, we both win. Say no to lazy Adwords management!