Temporary Domain Name

Temporary is not necessarily the most adequate term to be used in this situation, however I did not find another better one. It is not about getting a domain name and then just releasing it back to the registrar - this service is not out there yet. It is actually about getting a cheap domain that will be yours to use for as long as you extend the registration, in order to get a better flexibility.

Please consider the following situation:

• You need to host 10 websites
• There are a lot of hosting providers that allow hosting an unlimited number of sites, they even provide unlimited disk space and lately unlimited traffic. You get one of these packages
• When you buy the hosting, they ask you about a domain name. Since you have 10, you just choose one and go ahead with it.
• Everything nice so far, but when you install the second domain, you see that technically they install it in a subdomain of what they consider the main hosted domain
• That has multiple issues, as follows:
  • Your other nine domains will be now related to the first domain, you want it or not. Sometimes you don't care, sometimes maybe it is not such a good idea
  • You cannot just go ahead and move the first domain, because the other ones will also become non operational. That's a big issue already

So what do you plan to do to avoid this situation? You can go to a web hosting that does not go by this approach, however most of the Linux based web sites, at least the ones that you can get at a decent price and have very good reviews actually use this structure.

The best solution is to get a separate domain name, that does not have anything to do with the domains you need to host. You associate this domain with your hosting account, then add each of the above mentioned 10 domains one by one. The will be all subdomains of this separate domain name but that will be the only dependency.

What kind of domain you can get for this purpose:

• Search for domains on sale - they are always available. Name does not matter. For example the info domains were always on sale at Go Daddy, however there are other providers who will even beat this price
• Get the free "for life" domain offer from your hosting provider. Normally I would tell you to stay away from this kind of offers, because the domains will be registered in your hosting provider's name, however here it is an exception: you get this domain specifically for bridging your domains with this particular hosting provider, so you can safely leave this domain behind

As you can see, the solution is pretty simple, however it requires some planning and few people think about it before actually getting the hosting and starting the installation - when it is already too late.

The same thing should apply to servers. Attach your new VPS to a dummy domain you purchase specifically on this purpose and not to any of your "live" domains.