Moving a domain

derickmc

A client of mine wants me to develop a new website for them and move it to my hosting package.

Their prevous site was developed by another web developer sometime ago who also owns the domain name and has the site hosted on one of his hosting packages.

I will have to ask the other developer to release the domain and some how pick it up and add it to my hosting package.

I have never done this before. Can some one give me the heads up on what is involved or where to start?

Thanks

Eoin

I haven't done this in a while but I think your current registrar should have an option on their site to transfer a domain to them. This will send an email to the current owner / technical contact through their registrar and the transfer should go through when they click a link to confirm the move.

I think it's something like that, but I'm sure Blacknight can give you more details if he sees this thread. Will your new site be ready to go as soon as the domain is transferred?

Trojan

derickmc wrote: »

Their prevous site was developed by another web developer sometime ago who also owns the domain name and has the site hosted on one of his hosting packages.

Just a heads-up - that may be a problem. If the developer owns the domain name, rather than registering it originally as an agent of the client, then they may be entitled to hold onto it.

Regards the handover, if there is no hassle with the domain ownership, then it's a fairly trivial matter of changing nameservers with the registrar to point at the new host.

Meta point: make sure all of the existing pages either exist in the new site, or their old URLs are 301 redirected somewhere appropriate. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and that'll help, but if you can't do that beforehand then a simple google search for site:xyz.ie will get you a list of what google has indexed.

Freddio

Hi

This process can be fun at times. If its a dot IE domain name the owner will have to notify the IEDR either directly (by fax) or through the hosting companies (who will probably also need a fax to send on to the IEDR). Also if its a dot IE the owner should legally be the individual or organisation who have the right to the name (ie trading names etc.)

If its a dot com, the original guy will have to notify his hosting company that hes releasing the name, but again the automated service may prompt him/her by email to approve this

Hope this helps

mneylon

If it's a .ie domain name then there shouldn't be too much trouble, as the domain would be registered to the client ie. the designer / developer would not be the holder / registrant.

Depending on how things are setup at present you may need to organise the transfer to a different IEDR reseller, but that would be up to you.

If, however, it's a .com then it is possible that the domain has been registered using the developer/ designer's details and the client effectively has no claim on it.

You would need to ensure that the Registrant contact in whois for the domain is the client and get the domain released ie. unlocked + EPP key

You can then move it to whichever registrar you want and whichever hosting provider you want.