Domains

Where domains live

Domains sits in the account menu, beside the other account screens. It lists every domain the business runs on, in one place.

What the desk watches

For each domain the desk holds:

• What it is used for. The public site, the email, the client portal, the booking system, whatever runs on it.
• Its state. Active, expiring, or lapsed.
• When it renews. The date, and the name server it is pointed at.
• Who holds it. The name on the registration.

A domain is the kind of thing that lapses without anyone noticing until the email stops. Putting it on the desk means the renewal date is watched like every other date: prepared before it is due, and raised with you if it needs a decision.

Why it tells you who holds each one

Because the holder's name is the name that appears on the card statement.

Domains get bought in a hurry: by whoever was at a laptop at the time, with a card that was handy, under a personal account rather than the business's. Years later, the renewal charge is a line on a statement nobody recognises, and the domain sits in an account belonging to somebody who may have left.

Showing the holder against each domain turns that into a thing you can see. Every registered domain says, on the record, whose name it is in and how to get at the account it lives in, so a renewal is never a surprise and a hand-over never depends on somebody remembering a password.

Putting a domain on the desk

Domains can be added by name, or picked up from the connections the business has made, such as the mailbox or the website host. Adding one by name takes a moment and needs nothing but the domain itself.

Where the desk has access to the registrar, it handles the renewal the way it handles any other dated item: it prepares it, and where the renewal costs money, it asks before spending. See Connections for how access is given and what the permission panel allows.

Related work

Domains are one kind of dated obligation among many. Licences, registrations, certifications and inspections carry expiry dates in exactly the same way and sit on the same desk. The domain screen simply collects the internet-shaped ones together, where the holder question comes up most often.