Although setting up a GoDaddy.com account and registering a domain isn’t really rocket science, most of my friends and family would still prefer for me to just do it for them. I’m telling people all the time that they should really buy their name as a dot com domain if it’s still available. It’s my contention that as we move forward, deeper into the world of online social networking (Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect now taking it to the next level), the one unique identifier you will have is your own domain. If the domain is your name, so much the better.
I’m already starting to create sub-domains for some of the online services I use. For example, facebook.timothypost.com will redirect to my unwieldy Facebook URL. Also, I have twitter.timothypost.com go to my Twitter account. I’ve got about 5 or 6 of these sub-domains set-up.
In the future, I think you’ll start to see services like Facebook offer to mask your Facebook account URL with your own domain. Wordpress.com already does this for $10 a year. The sub-domain route is the one I’d choose. In fact, Google Apps will let you create custom sub-domains for some of their services. I have my Google Calendar, (which I now use instead of iCal, although I synch the two because iCal is better than the Google calendar web app on my iPhone) URL customized as calendar.timothypost.com. Easy to remember. This option should be standard on every social media tool or service.
Back to GoDaddy and domains. Yesterday, my wife asked me to buy for her name as a domain. Last week I bought 2 of my friends their names as domains for New Years presents (Russians give gifts on New Years but not so much on Russian Christmas on Jan 7th). The main impetus for my friends and family getting their own domains is Google Apps. If you own your own domain you can create a Google Apps account and essentially use Gmail for your email software but have a custom email address. Even better, standard accounts are free (My only beef, and it’s a big one is that you can’t link your Google Apps account with your regular Google account so it gets to be quite confusing. An elegant solution would be much appreciated).
Normally what I’ll do is register the domain in my own account then have the other person set-up their own GoDaddy.com account and eventually transfer the domain. Transferring a domain is quite straight forward and painless. Simple in fact. However, while this process works fine the problems occur after the transfer has already occurred and the other person needs to change a CNAME or MX Record. While again, not rocket science it’s a bit like changing a tire. Until you’ve done it a couple times it seems challenging. So what to do?
A lot of web masters/designers will register clients’ domains in their own accounts and manage everything in one place. While this is fine for the web designer, it presents a huge liability for the website owner. What if the website owner decides to change web design firms? In a perfect world, the old web designer will simply transfer the domain over to the new web designer’s account. But sometimes things don’t go smoothly and people have disputes. Basically, if your web designer has “your” domain (perhaps you are even listed with whois.net as the actual owner of the domain) you could be held hostage. Unlikely but still possible.
What I prefer to do is transfer the domain to my friends and family accounts as soon as possible. If they need to make changes in the future, normally they just give me their username and password and I log-in and make the necessary changes. This is alright when there’s only a couple people whom you’re helping. But recently it has started to get challenging as the number of people I’m helping increased (thankfully I have the an awesome Mac app called 1Password which manages hundreds of my usernames and passwords). Nonetheless, last night as I spoke with a Godaddy rep I thought there must be a better way.
My idea is as follows: Why doesn’t GoDaddy.com offer a service which would allow accounts to be linked and for one account to give the other permissions to make certain changes, additions, or edits? The client (website owner) would open an account themselves. The web designer would go through the normal registration process but would have the option of assigning the domain to the website owner’s account (all you need is the account number and user’s email address like in a transfer) during the registration. The website owner would then login and accept ownership. So far so good.
Next the website owner will purchase a new service from GoDaddy.com called “Web Master Permissions” for, let’s say $24 bucks a year. The website owner enters the web master/designer’s account number and email address and chooses which permissions s/he want to give the designer. The web designer accepts in his/her account and can now has access to all the necessary parts of the client’s account. The great part is that the web master/designer can manage 5, 10, 20 clients from within their own account and not have to worry about keeping one account straight from another. The client feels secure because they not only own their domain but control it too. GoDaddy creates a new revenue stream. A win-win-win.
