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(Screencap from Will Brinson of CBS Sports)

Do you know who is managing your website once the company you hired to do the web design has turned the keys back over to you? Hopefully as a small business owner you know where your site is hosted and when the domain names comes up for renewal. We don’t ask to insult you but if a company as universally large as the Dallas Cowboys can forget to renew their domain name, it isn’t unthinkable for a small business to forget to do the same amidst the daily hustle and bustle of running your company.

The Cowboys are one of the most recognizable sports franchises in America and yesterday the team fired its head coach. Seems like the kind of day that would drive a lot of traffic to the team’s website. Unfortunately when fans and followers typed in “DallasCowboys.com” they were taken to a generic placeholder website showing two young children playing soccer. While many assumed there was just so much traffic the site went down but according to the Dallas Morning News that was not the case.

The paper is reporting that the domain name “DallasCowboys.com” came up for renewal and nobody renewed it. The job apparently belonged to Jerry Jones, Jr. and the team’s Internet Marketing department. The son of the team owner got the domain renewed but it took some time before the site was back up and running.

So if the Dallas Cowboys can lose sight of website renewals it is a good bet many small business can as well. When you go to get a website designed there are some very important things you need to find out and many of the roles you need filled would fall to a website manager and not the person in charge of website design.

Make sure when you begin the website design process the site is built on a content management system (CMS) that you will always have access to and that is simple enough for anyone to use. Often times companies get into a contract with a web design company and later finds out that they are not getting what they were promised. If you do not own that site, where it is hosted and the content management system it was built on, you could be stuck between a rock and a hard place and at the company’s mercy when you try and go your separate ways.

Hosting and domain renewals are just a few of the nuts and bolts things that need to be handled before anyone can ever see your expensive website. If you are unsure of this process, you owe it to yourself to get all the facts before you sign any contract.