We do not sell domain names, but we will help our clients get one. If you are a MRM Web Design client and would like us to register a domain name for you, we will be happy to registered it (in your name) for a charge of $10 plus the registration cost of $10.00 per year.
It is very important that you update your domain name registration information if you change your email address. Otherwise, you may not be notified regarding domain name renewal, and if your domain name expires, your web site will be inaccessible. Equally important, your domain name should be registered in your name, with your info given as the Administrative Contact. Many amateur "webmasters" and "web designers" list themselves as the owners of domains they register for others, and when they disappear their clients find it extremely difficult and costly to gain control of their domain name, which may be vital to their business.
When it comes to selecting a domain name for your web site, it is best to go with a name which is as close as possible to your name or your company name – using abbreviations or acronyms when appropriate or necessary. Unless you are actually a network like AOL or Verizon, we strongly advise against using a .net suffix, or any suffix other than .com. People almost never remember a suffix other than .com, so if your desired domain name is not available as a .com, never use .net as second choice, think of something else instead. An .org or .gov suffix should be used only if the web site is that of an actual organization or government agency.
It is not unusual to hear people announcing that they "already have a domain name and a hosting account", as if they have taken a giant step toward owning a live web site. We understand their sense of accomplishment, and realize they might have spent hours reviewing many web hosting companies before making a choice. But what few realize is that they are probably unqualified to make an educated decision regarding web hosting.
Web servers and web hosting services are not equal, and price is not the most important factor to consider because web host pricing can be extremely deceptive to the uninitiated.
In order to realize a profit, low-cost hosting companies will typically put more than a thousand web sites on a single server, when less than 256 is optimal. This slows down server response and can overtax hardware. Additionally, offering large amounts of disk space and bandwidth for a low-price may look good, but it is usually a meaningless gauge of value because your web site will probably use only a small fraction of what is offered. When a hosting company claims to give you a certain amount of disk space and traffic (bandwidth) for a certain price, the disk space and bandwidth isn't assigned exclusively to you, it is merely there if you need it. Hosting companies use a practice known as "overselling", which means they sell more disk space and bandwidth than they actually have because they know almost all of their customers will use only a small fraction of their allotments.
Importantly, hardware and software differ. Many web hosting companies do not offer the state-of-the-art hardware, software, and control panels developers prefer. We strongly recommend our web clients purchase a hosting service only if it offers Linux servers and the cPanel web site control panel.
Better yet, we offer exclusively to our web design clients state-of-the-art hosting for $100 annually. All of our new web hosting accounts are placed on our new server described above, and it is one of the fastest servers on the web!
In any event, we strongly advise our clients not to subscribe to a web hosting plan without first consulting us. Clients who subscribe to hosting services not provided by mrmWebDesign.com will be billed $60 per hour for any support, advice, intervention, or troubleshooting we may provide regarding the client's server and the client's hosting account, $25 minimum. We require a valid FTP hostname, username, and password for a client's servers not provided by mrmWebDesign.com. If the client does not subscribe to a MRM Web Design hosting service, and is unable to provide a valid and workable FTP hostname, username, and password for his server, we will bill the client $60 per hour for our intervention in obtaining the required info, $25 minimum.
We'll update a DNS free of change for our web hosting clients who already own a domain name, if they can provided us with the domain name registrar's url and the necessary account logins. If you do not know the registrar, or if you require our assistance to obtain the necessary passwords and account information for an existing domain name you own, there will be an additional charge of $25-$50 to research and obtain the necessary information. One more reason to let us register your domain name for you – in your name, with you as the domain name's owner.