What You Actually Own Online

A website is made of a few separate pieces, often paid to different companies. Knowing what they are, and whose name they’re in, is one of the simplest ways to protect your business online.

It helps to think of it like property.

Your domain is your address

Your domain is the name people type to find you, like yourbusiness.co.za. It’s usually the second half of your email address too.

You don’t buy a domain outright. You register it for a year or more at a time and renew it. The person or business it’s registered to is the holder, called the registrant. That should be you or your business, not your designer, an old IT contact or a family member who helped out.

If a domain isn’t renewed, your website and email stop working. Leave it long enough and it’s released for anyone to register, including someone hoping to sell it back to you.

Your hosting is the plot of land

Hosting is the space on a server where your website’s files live. You rent it from a hosting company, usually monthly or yearly. If your email runs through your hosting, it depends on this account too.

Your domain and hosting are often with the same company, but they don’t have to be. The domain simply points to wherever the website is hosted, so each can be moved without the other.

The hosting account should be in your name, with the bills going to an email address you actually read. A lot of website trouble starts with a renewal notice sent to an inbox nobody checks.

Your website is the house

The website is what’s built on the hosting. For most small businesses, that’s WordPress, a theme, a set of plugins, and your words and photos.

Your words, photos and logo belong to your business. Keep copies of them outside the website, so they’re never only in one place.

Some websites also use premium themes or plugins that run on a paid licence, often arranged through your designer. It’s simply useful to know which ones your site relies on.

Your logins are the keys

Every piece has its own login: the domain, the hosting account, WordPress, and the services around your website, like your booking system, your Google Business Profile and your social media accounts.

A few habits make a big difference:

• The accounts are in your name. Even if someone else manages them, you should be the owner and able to reset access.
• Everyone gets their own login. Your designer or developer should have their own user account, not your password. When the work ends, their access can be removed without changing anything else.
• Passwords live somewhere safe. A password manager is better than a notebook, and much better than a WhatsApp chat.
• Two-step verification is on wherever it’s offered, so a stolen password isn’t enough on its own.

Owning it and looking after it are different jobs

It’s completely normal to have someone else look after your website. Most business owners would rather run their business than renew domains and update plugins. That’s what my Website Care Plan is for.

But looking after something isn’t the same as owning it. A designer can manage your domain and hosting on your behalf while both stay in your name. If you ever part ways, you keep everything and hand access to whoever looks after it next.

Make a one-page record

The easiest way to stay in control is to write it all down once. A single page is enough:

• Domain: the name, who it’s registered with, whose name it’s in, and when it renews.
• Hosting: the company, the account holder, the plan, and when it renews.
• Email: where it runs and who manages it.
• Website: what it’s built with, and where the backups are kept.
• Access: who has a login to what.

Keep it somewhere safe and update it when anything changes. If you can’t fill in a line, it’s better to find out now than when something has stopped working.

Not sure what you own?