Domain Registrant VS Web Master

THE ETERNAL WAR BETWEEN THE DOMAIN REGISTRANT AND THE WEB MASTER

Among the support requests that arrive at our Commercial Help Desk there are often requests for help from users who own the domain but do not manage the web space. Precisely for this reason I thought and wrote this article. The purpose is to explain the difference between DOMINO OWNER and HOSTING OWNER and how to behave accordingly.

The approach I took in writing the article is absolutely impartial. I simply wanted to tell and provide details on a topic that is often an area of ​​conflict between the owner of the domain and the owner of the hosting product and the data contained within it.

Who is the owner of the domain?

The domain holder, or registrant, is the person to whom the registration of a domain is assigned (private individual, company or other entity).

Anyone can verify the identity of the domain owner by consulting a whois service of their choice among those available online, as long as privacy (an option that allows the domain owner's data to be obscured online) is disabled. I am referring mainly to international domains.

Among the many websites that allow you to verify the details of the domain owner, I would like to point out a few:

For international domains http://whois.domaintools.com/

For .it domains http://web-whois.nic.it/

For .eu domains https://eurid.eu/it/

I remind you that the policies regarding privacy and visibility of data online are regulated directly by the relevant register.

Who owns the active product (hosting) and the data within it? The ownership of the active hosting product lies with the user registered on the site of a hosting service provider.

The owner of the hosting product and the data contained within it may not coincide with the owner of the domain. Being the owner of the active hosting product and the associated contents does not equate to also being the person (or subject) to whom the domain registration has been assigned. This case often occurs when an individual registers a domain and then assigns the creation of a website to an external web agency. In this case, the owner of the domain is the person who commissioned the creation of the website, while the owner of the product is the web agency that purchases hosting to carry out the commissioned work.

In the previous paragraph I indicated how to verify the domain owner's data. But how do you know who is the owner of the hosting product and therefore also of all the data contained within it?

For greater clarity I give you an easy example in which we have two distinct subjects:

WEB MASTER who was commissioned to create and manage the website

CUSTOMER of the web master, client of the creation of the website.

In most cases, the CUSTOMER is the owner of the domain (the contact visible using a whois service), while the web space and the data contained within it are the property of the WEB MASTER, who registered on the website of a hosting service provider to purchase a hosting product.

It could happen that the domain owner receives an invoice issued by the hosting service provider without ever having purchased a hosting product. This is the case of JoomlaHost.it which allows its customers to create multiple billing profiles that refer to the main one (selected by default). This does not mean that the domain owner has independent management of the hosting product, but simply that the web master has chosen to invoice his customer directly, maintaining the management of the service himself.

What can the domain owner do? It often happens that you receive the request for independent management of the domain directly from its owner, who, for various reasons, no longer has contact with the web master to whom he had commissioned his website (perhaps due to misunderstandings between the parties).

The owner of the domain, in this case, can only take possession of the domain name, without however having access to the associated web space, as it is the property of the web master. For privacy and copyright reasons it is not possible to provide access to the web space owned by others, much less a copy of the data contained within the same web space.

The owner of the domain will then be able to take possession of the management of the domain and will therefore be able to decide whether to purchase a new hosting product, manage the DNS or transfer it to another internet service provider. In any case, the transfer of contents must always be requested and provided by the web master who owns them.

Useful advice FOR THE DOMAIN REGISTRANT: my advice is to look for a reliable web master or web agency, perhaps following the suggestion of someone you trust, through word of mouth or by reading the reviews of other users online. Before commissioning the creation of a website it is always a good idea to request the domain name and above all to stipulate a clear contract that includes clauses for possession of the data once the work is finished.

FOR THE WEB MASTER: the advice is to always be transparent with your client and therefore stipulate a contract with clear conditions at both a technical and administrative level. I also suggest not giving customers the administrative credentials to access the web space until you receive the right (financial) compensation from your customer.

What are the operations related to a domain maintained on Host.it that can be requested from us? Host.it offers the possibility of moving the active product from one registered profile to another with a simple click from the active services area. This operation is useful if the web master wants to transfer the management of the product directly to the customer.

What if the domain owner is no longer in contact with the web master? In the next article I will go into detail about the operations to be carried out to recover the autonomous management of a domain maintained in JoomlaHost.it based on the type of domain owner (natural person, company or other entity).