[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6yG8JZMwt8[/youtube]
Do you own your identity online? Who controls your domain name? Can your hosting service pull the plug on you? Would that mean you would lose all of your files and the rights to your identity? These questions are the sort of things that won’t matter very much to you. . . until they do and then they’ll matter a lot!
I was just listening to This Week in YouTube. Chad Johnson and Lamarr Wilson were discussing news that DailyGrace and mydamnchannel.com are having a bit of a spat about her online identity and it sounds like there’s not going to be a happy outcome for either side on this one.
Your identity online is closely tied to the domain names you use and own, and all the copyright issues that go with publishing anything, anywhere. There are a lot of outfits that will give you a quick identity and attach a domain name to it. somewhere deep down in the terms of service you may find that everything is slanted in favor of the service, after all they wrote the terms, right? If you join a service that will get your website going fast and easy that’s great, you don’t have to be a web wizard now to have a great looking website.
Services like squarespace and wp.com and tumblr will set you up, taking care of everything from domain name to design. But, and it’s a big but, you’ll find that they hold on to everything in the way of rights and if that one domain name was the thing that you hung your hopes and dreams on you might find that you are just out of luck. It would be very upsetting for you if you lost it to them.
Why would that happen? Well, lots of reasons, but it comes down to having the final say in what goes onto their websites. Yes, their websites, they see everything on their servers as property. All providers tend to look at it that way and probably for legal reasons couldn’t do it any other way.
The issue comes down to a balance of power. Have you allowed them to be in a position to completely control what you put out? How would you prevent it anyway? The first thing to do is to just be proactive. That’s another way of saying stop being lazy, learn a few things so that you can be independent enough to make informed choices.
First, you have to learn enough about marketing and what you are trying to achieve and what will effectively attract readers. You need to know what you need to do to get where you’re going. Basically that’s a marketing strategy in a nutshell. Then decide on your domain and purchase it from a site that is entirely separate from your hosting service. If you own your own name you can always move elsewhere and start again. If your hosting service set up your domain name they may just as easily take it from you.
Finally, back up your site. The important information that defines your posts, pages and media should all be kept in a separate backup of your own. Take the trouble to do a weekly export of the XML file for your site. Learn your provider’sr protocols for backup, they might make it easy for you.
What ever you do get a copy in your control,either stored on a third party site or on your own hard disk. In the end you may have to lose a few days of work but you could start again elsewhere without your readers ever knowing there was a change. There are other issues at play of course Like backup files, you need to back up your computer both locally and through a cloud service like Carbonite. Learn what your options are for automatic backup with your service.
I’m not suggesting you should now be dissatisfied with the host aht has served you well so far. You may never have a problem or even know someone who does. All I am saying is make sure that you learn enough about how it works and what you need to insure that you are truly independent on the Internet.
