Before you purchase a domain name consider the answers to these questions:

Who will be the owner?

Who will be contacted if the owner is unreachable?

Who will be the domain administer?

Who will manage the website content?

Who will be paying the domain renewal invoice?

Is a domain registrar needed?

Here's how website builders handle domain registration:

1.They automatically register the person creating the website as the domain owner.

2. They will handle the technical aspects of managing your domain records or will give you some degree of access to your domain records.

3. They may or may not include the cost to renew your domain in their website pricing package. 

4. They may or may not include the option and cost to host domain email in their package. 

5. They may allow you to transfer the website to another account holder (a different owner) but doing so does not transfer the domain or the domain billing records. Transferring a domain is a separate process from transferring a website. 

6. They are required by law to initiate domain transfers. In other words, the domain owner can transfer her domain records to a different domain registrar or a different website builder or host. Only your domain will be transferred, not your website. Website builders own proprietary templates, that will not "function" on any other hosting sites. 

By default, whoever created an account with a website builder is automatically the domain owner (registrant) of any domains purchased in that account.

While this is ideal for most account holders, your chapter's domain should not be owned by an individual. It should be registered to your chapter (a business organization). A website and a domain name are two separate things. They are always treated as two different items. The domain owner and the website owner may be two different entities. In fact that is pretty common.

When using a website builder to purchase a domain, the default setting is for the account holder to be both the domain owner and the website owner. 

In order for the chapter to become the domain owner of record some changes will need to occur. The account holder will need to contact Support and tell them to update the ICANN registration records. (This does not apply to websites that do not have a purchased domain name as their URL.) 

Tell Support to change the DOMAIN OWNER/REGISTRANT from your account owner name into the name of your chapter. Spell out the full chapter name. Provide them with your chapter's email address (the one assigned by ASG which ends in @asg). Give them the ASG Houston phone and street address. Using this ASG information ensures the domain will remain in the hands of your ASG chapter. 

The Web Manager will remain on the account as the DOMAIN ADMINISTRATOR and will retain the ability to make both account and website changes. Provide them with your chapter email address or whatever email address will be used to handle Support inquiries, billing and account log in. You can use the Web Manager's phone and street address if you don't mind having it listed in public domain records. You can use the ASG Houston office phone and street address here as well.

A chapter may opt for a domain registrar in order to retain full control over their domain name. This is often the case when a person outside their chapter is building their website. After it is built, the chapter will then point their domain name to where the website is hosted. 

Chapters that use a domain registrar usually have either a WP site or a self coded website. Some website builders allow a domain to be pointed to their servers. Others require you to transfer your domain to them. Some chapters prefer to have the website and domain under the same account. Others prefer to keep them separate. 

Purchasing a domain does not require you to create a website. Your chapter can purchase a domain well before it is needed. Some domain registrars offer website builder templates and website hosting for a separate fee. Be aware that you can not move a website created by a template. 

The process of transferring a domain has its own web page.

Here's how a domain registrar handles domain purchase and registration: 

1. A person will use an email address to create an account on the registrar site and becomes an account holder. (If the person creating the account has access to their chapter's email account, use the chapter email address in this step when possible.) 

2. The account holder will purchase a domain under that account.  

3. The account holder will be given full access to a dashboard area and will be able to create and edit their domain records.

4. The registrar will ask the account holder for billing information including a credit card.