I just completed a website for John A. Alvarez & Sons, Modular home builders in Hudson, NY. The production process couldn’t have been easier. I wish every client was as thorough and organized as Jason Alvarez and his staff. They sent me a disk full of descriptively labled pictures and a text document with page headings and the content they wanted on each page. From there it was a matter of coming up with a color scheme, navigation plan, create the design and plug in the content. It was when the site was complete that we ran into problems.
The previous AlvarezModulars site was hosted with one of those “package deal” companies that provide a domain, hosting account and a web template where you just plug in information and pictures. While this seems a simple solution for a quick business website, it wasn’t so simple when they wanted to change to a new host for their new website. The first sign of trouble was that there was NO contact phone number on this hosting site. It happens all the time, businesses sign up for a hosting account, buy a domain name and promptly lose their log in information. Support tickets went unresponded to, password recovery didn’t work (because we didn’t know what email had been used to create the account) and so what were we to do?
In the end we were able to resolve the issues, and I won’t go into the tedious process necessary to recover control over the domain and everything, but I write this post with a purpose. If I can give potential web site owners any advice it’s this: if there is no phone number and mailing address on your potential web host’s site, FIND ANOTHER WEB HOST. What I generally recommend is for the website owner to purchase their domain name seperately from their hosting. That way, you’ll always have control over your domain, no matter what web host you are using. Buy your domains first, from a reputable Registrar like GoDaddy or Network Solutions. Then purchase your web hosting from a reliable source that offers 24/7 tech support by phone/email/trouble ticket and clearly publishes their phone number (preferably a toll-free one) and their mailing address. Once you’ve done all that, make sure you file away your log in information somewhere safe!