Transferring a Domain Name

If you own your domain name but you originally bought it as part of a hosting package you won't necessarily have the facility to "point" the domain name at your new web site. This would usually involve you having access an online "control panel" which will let you do this. The first thing to do is simply check through the information the company you registered the name with gave to you - did they give you a password to use, for example? If they did then you may well be able to point to the new web site without bothering to transfer the name. If that's the case, though, do make sure that you're only going to be paying for the domain name registration and not the entire hosting package. If it's going to be costing you much more than £20-30 every couple of years then it may well be worth transferring.

I'm going to tell you here how to transfer to a company called Namesco. They will manage your domain name for you, and make it very easy for you to point at your new site. There are other companies who will do much the same but I've always dealt with Namesco, I understand how they work, and that's who I'm recommending that you use. The first thing to do is simply print out this page so that you've got it to hand while you work through the instructions.

The next thing is to click on this link to Namesco, and then click on the word "domains" that you'll see in a navigation bar at the top of the page. You'll see that there is a fair bit to do here and, if you feel daunted by it I'll happily do it for you. In that case, though, I will need to charge you an extra £20 for doing so, simply because it can sometimes be a rather fiddly process. Even then, though, I will still need you to perform some of the steps yourself, but under those circumstances I'll be talking you through everything on the phone.

Having done that, scroll down the page and click on the button towards the bottom of the page marked "Transfer your Domain Name". Then click on the "New Customers Create Account" link, again towards the bottom of the page. Then click "Continue", enter your details and "proceed".

What will you do ultimately will depend to some extent on what the suffix of your domain name is but, regardless of that, unless you already have an account with Namesco your first step will be to create an account with the company by clicking on this link -

Having done that, you'll be confronted with an online form asking you to give some information about yourself - name, email address and so on. You'll need to enter your address too, and it won't be apparent where you do that until you've selected your country at which point another box will open for your postcode. You'll also need to create a password - the site will give you some guidance about how to do that - and you'll also need to choose a "memorable word" - make sure you make a note of your answer!

Having done all that click on "Continue", agree to the terms and conditions displayed on the next page - you'd generally define yourself as a "business" at this point - click on the "Confirm" button and then go through the process of entering your credit card details.

Once you've registered your domain name, and received a confirmatory email from Namesco, you're ready to go back to the control panel. Namesco will have given you the address for that in their email, but you'll also find it just beside the link you clicked on previously.

When you get to your control panel you'll find all sorts of goodies but you need to look over on the left hand side and click on the link marked "Domain Names"

Once the new page opens look over on the left hand side again and, this time, click on the link marked "Add a Domain"

A new page will open and, again, look over on the left hand side and now click on the link marked "Transfer Domain"

You'll then come to another page (this does go on a bit!) at which point at which point what you do will depend on the suffix of your domain name. Given that almost all of my clients have ".uk" domain names that's the example that I'm going to follow in these instructions. So, your next step is to click on this link -

At this point Namesco provide you with three steps which you need to follow.

Step one is straightforward enough. Simply type the name of your domain name in the box at the bottom of the page a click on the "proceed" button. When you've done that you'll be asked to confirm the current details relating to the domain name. The key thing is that your name should be down there as the registered owner of the name. If you're not, then let me know. Once you've confirmed that you are the owner of the domain probably the best thing to do is log out of the control panel and then log back in again. You certainly don't have to do that, but it seems incredibly easy to get tangled up in a succession of different pages at this point.

For Step two you need to go back to the opening page of the control panel again and click on the "Domain Names" link over on the left hand side once again.

Having done that, if all has gone according to plan, you should find your domain name is now listed in the centre of the page, in a particularly lurid shade of orange. Click on it.

Once the new page has loaded look over on the left hand side again, and click on "Account Settings"

You're nearly there. Looking over on the left hand side yet again, now click on "Default DNS Settings"

You'll then be presented with something that will look similar, but not identical, to this -

All you need to do here is click there, and then click on "update" at the bottom of the page. Step 2 is now complete.

You now only need to complete the final step as indicated in that list -

Which, as you might guess, simply means that you have to contact the company you originally dealt with when you registered the domain name and ask them, as it says on the list, to "change the Nominet TAG on your domain name to "NAMESCO". They may well take a couple of days to do this but, in the meantime, you can now go back to the home page of the control panel and point the domain name at your new web site. The instructions for doing this are here.