Domain Name Management

Domain names are cheap. Its not a hard thing to go buy one. So why would you want someone to manage your company's domain names for you? Well, the DNS system is a bit complicated, and few people understand enough about it to effectively manage this all important asset. Give yourself this test to see if you understand the basics of the DNS record:

  1. What is an "A" record?
  2. What is an MX record?
  3. What is a backup or fail-over MX server? How many do I need?
  4. How many nameservers do I need? Why should we have more than one?
  5. What is a CNAME and how do I use it? How many can I have?
  6. What is the SOA and why is it so important?
  7. What is TTL and how does it effect the DNS record?
  8. Spammers are sending email out using our domain name, is there anything we can do to stop them?

Well, the management part of it is where the process breaks down. Big companies that have IT staffs have people that are skilled in this so they can do it themselves. Our experience is that most small to medium sized companies do not have staff that understand how to manage all the aspects of their DNS records. Here are some of the questions and problems that clients have BEFORE they delegate these tasks to us:

  1. We can't find the password. How do we reset it?
  2. We get so much SPAM. Is there anything we can do about it?
  3. I recieved this mail saying my domain name is expiring but it is not from the company I have it registered with, what do I do?
  4. We forgot to renew our domain name and it expired.. now our web site and email are down.
  5. We dont know how to transfer the domain to the new web server, can you help us?
  6. We had a guy that used to do that and now he is gone from our company.... he had all that information and now we cant find it.
  7. They tell us that the Nameserver record is not right and that is creating all of our other problems. What do we do?
  8. I got this letter in the mail... it says I have to fillout the form and send them some money or my web site and email will go down. Who are these guys? I dont know what to do. It looks official. Should I pay them?
  9. This service says they will monitor my web site to make sure it stays up all the time and they will submit my domain name to all these search engines. This is a good thing, right?

Managing your company's domain names is a convenience service that we usually bundle with web site development or web and email hosting. You can do it yourself, but chances are your time is better spent producing revenue in your business. When you originally purchase your domain name many of the settings are in a basic mode and this is where the hackers, spammers, and harassers on the Internet take advantage of you. XI Interactive will provide you with a private registration service if you desire it so that you won't be harrased. We can handle all of the technical mumbo-jumbo for you and we will make everything work like it is supposed to. We will even configure your domain name records to reduce the SPAM that can flow through your mail servers.