[Nottingham] registering web domain

[Joe Wrigley]

> When you pay a company to host your website on a certain domain name, do 
> you "own" the domain name as well or does it belong to the company that 
> hosts your site?
> And what's the situation if you register a domain name and pay for it, 
> will any provider host your site under your registered domain name? If 
> someone does host your website, is it still your domain name for a 
> couple of years or so?

Briefly, yes it's yours for the 2 years (for .uk, not sure about others) 
that you register it for.

Often, you can register a domain with the hosting provider. That way 
everything gets done for you. It can make it more difficult if you want 
to change hosting, as you may not have direct control over DNS and 
suchlike. Alternatively, you can register your domain with someone like 
http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ (a local company with whom my own affiliation 
is merely that I have used them and found the support to be good) and 
then get hosting elsewhere. This means you can change hosting at will, 
as you get a control panel. You can pay for hosting with another company 
(I use www.alivewww.com, but there are lots of others). You tell them 
your domain, and they tell you which nameservers to bung into your 
123-reg control panel and within a couple of days, it should all just work.

As far as I understand it, the domain is yours until you cancel it, 
although you have to keep your payments up to date. There are other 
things that need doing if it gets detagged due to missed payment. Have a 
look at www.nic.uk. I'm sure you will get more full explanations from 
the usual suspects ;)

Joe