curiousI think I will probably keep the livredor subdomain I have for stuff related to this journal; I want to be able to point people like potential employers to my website without them easily being able to find my blog from there. Not that this is terribly secret, but it doesn't necessarily give a professional first impression.
So, a couple of questions for those who know these things. My current hosts, Portland Communications, are doing a special offer of domain name registration at £25 for two years. I know I could get cheaper than that, but I like and trust Portland, they've been truly excellent (free!) web hosts, and that counts for quite a lot.
What's putting me off is that the terms of signing up with them seem to be that you give them a credit card number, and they take money off it automatically when the registration expires. I really don't like that, I don't like giving companies I trade with access to help themselves from my card (even if I basically trust them). And it seems like it's going to be hard to get out of, too. I mean, Portland's standard, non-special offer prices are quite expensive compared to the going rate, so I'd want to shop around before renewing. It seems to be really awkward, you have to give Portland 30 days notice that you don't intend to renew the domain, so how would the transfer across work? Would you choose a host in advance, and then give Portland notice, then wait 30 days and then transfer to the new host?
Is this sort of behaviour normal from domain registering people? I've heard of people forgetting to renew their domain, and I think I'd prefer to have the opportunity to forget, rather than be locked into the system. I mean, how does it normally work when you come to the end of a registration period? Is it always really difficult to switch to a new registration service? If I decide against Portland for the above reasons, I'll probably go with Black Cat Networks, since they're cheap and I vaguely know friends of friends of the people involved.
The other issue I have is: there's a reasonable chance that I may move abroad in the next 12 months. Is there any reason it would be a bad idea to have my domain registered with a UK company, in these circumstances? I don't mind about the .uk tld, I'm quite happy with that. (Should I not be?)
