When you register a domain name, your details are stored by the registra and are publicly available, you can obtain this information by way of a whois. The WHOIS system originated as a method that system administrators could use to look up information to contact other IP address or domain name owners  (almost like a Phone book)

An example whois look up result is here

Registrant:
        Dns Admin
        Google Inc.
        Please contact  1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
         Mountain View CA 94043
        US
         +1.6502530000 Fax: +1.6506188571

    Domain Name: google.com

        Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
        Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
        Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com

There are many freely available online tools to do this search, so as you can appreciate, anybody can see who owns the domain, so what can you do about it?

The first is to use false information, except the problem with that is its illegal, and if found out, you run the risk of having your domain name suspended, not such a good idea if you have spent months or years building up a recognisable brand

Second, for .co.uk domains, is to use the privacy opt out facility, granted by Nominet (the people that manage UK domains)

This will allow you to hide your address, but not your name, but their rules are very strict, one of them is you can only use it for private individuals, and as being an escort is a profession you don’t qualify, again many ladies take this option, but if Nominet get wind of it, they will remove that hidden status leaving all your details on show

Third option is to use a Domain registrant privacy service, this is probably the easiest and most reliable, what happens is although the domain is yours, you pay a company to use their details in place of yours, there are many of these services available, 2 we have used in the past are supplied by godaddy.com and 123-reg.co.uk. At Miradesign we now also offer a domain privacy registration service, including forwarding any paperwork in a plain brown envelope to an address of your choosing if so desired

If you are interested in that service, please contact us for more information

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These come in various guises and all have merits and pitfalls, for all of them the main merit is, cost and many will let you edit the site yourselves, but as the old saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so here im just posting a few of the pitfalls of a free escort website

The domain name

I have covered this in an earlier topic, so wont really go over it again, just to mention many sites come with domain names like yourname.somefreesite.com, not exactly very memorable is it? Some “free” sites let you buy your own domain name, but then charge a vastly inflated price for the privilege

The kindly webmaster

Somebody gets a web design programme, sees the rates an escort charges and decides they want a part of it, but they have nothing to show how good or bad they are, so they will approach you, chat rooms are a common place for this one, offering you a free website so they can build up their portfolio, great, so they register your domain and put a site together for you, then they start touting for others, except you need changes, which is perfectly understandable, so you email them requesting it, at first no problem, after a few months he is busy with other things, or the football season has started, so the changes take longer and longer, after all they are bored with it, and its not like your paying, eventually the webmaster becomes un contactable, and your stuck with an out of date site that’s worthless

The 3^rd party DIY site

These have exploded in popularity recently and there are a couple devoted just for escorts, the idea is you pick an off the shelf template, add your words and pictures and bobs your mothers brother you have your own site, you want to change the words or pictures, no problem, you can do that, except being a template, with only certain editable regions it looks like so many more, difficult to sell individuality if your just a clone.
Some of these suppliers do not allow adult content, or do at first and then change their terms, and just throw you off, again because they are “free” you have no recourse, and you have to kiss all your hard work goodbye, a very recent example of this is Microsoft Live, so its not just the unknown companies that do it.
Then there is the flash based templates they look good and usually offer more flexibility due to flash, but cant be read by search engines, which means relying on directories, link exchanges and word of mouth to advertise, looking at the stats last month, this site had over 40,000 hits from Google, so its not something to be sniffed at

The advertising

Another often overlooked problem with many “free” sites is advertising, even a free site, costs somebody money, development costs, hosting costs, maintenance, costs they all mount up and have to be paid for, this is usually by having adverts on your site, fine, just bare in mind, you don’t have any control over these adverts, what if they don’t suit you, advertising fur coats, when you’re a vegan for example, or big garish flashing porn banners, going to look a bit tacky, especially when marketing yourself as a High class escort .

Now this is not to put you off a free escort website, just to remember that nothing in life is really free, and to bear these points in mind when taking one up

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A lady contacted me the other day rather confused, she said that somebody could visit her site but not see anything when he arrived, and could she list her services etc, after a long chat it was established that he was a visitor to the area, and could not access her site on the hotel computer, the site was being viewed on a mobile phone, and with the combination of many different additions that had been made the content was unreadable, so it poses the question is your site mobi compatible?

An easy way of seeing how your site displays on mobile phones is to use one of the many mobile phone browser emulators, I have listed some below so you can try it yourself

If you discover your site will not display properly, what are your options?
the most obvious one is to rebuild the site but in many cases that is impractical, so an easier solution is to create a mobi website and place a link on your main site, that way visitors will have a choice as to which site to display

A mobi site is designed to display on smaller screens and also contains less information to help with loading times, at miradesign we tend to create just four pages:

• The index page, which details your location
• The about page, which tells a little about you, we tend just to add stats, age, size, and services you do/do not offer
• The rates page, which details your rates
• The contact page, self explanatory, but just has your email, phone number and times of contact

We tend to use a small different picture on each page rather than a gallery, and our feed back has always been positive

So with the amount of travellers who now use mobiles rather than hotel computers, maybe its time to think mobi

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ok so we all know what a domain is, for you at the back that’s not sure it’s a way of helping people find their way around the internet, every computer on the internet has a unique address known as an ip address, which is just a long string of numbers, but like phone numbers its hard to remember every one, so using a domain name instead it makes it more memorable, after all take 66.234.564.118 we can have www.miradesign.co.uk instead.
So now we know that

• When should I get one?
• How do we get one?
• What does it cost?
• How does it work?

I am going to concentrate just on .co.uk and .com domains here, although there are many more extensions available, and much of the text will apply to all of them

First of all if we are going to obtain a domain name, we need to think of one and then see if its available, many many names are already registered, so be creative and get a few ideas together, then to find out if its available, many domain registrant companies have a handy search, like the one below, give it a go and see if your domains available
So in answer to when should you get one, I say as soon as possible, you can register it now and leave it parked until your ready to use it.

Once you have found the domain of your dreams, you will need to register it, before somebody else has the same idea, and for that you need a domain registrant, these are companies set up just for the purpose and handle the registration and control on your behalf, the format is quite simple, once you choose to register, you will be asked for a few personal details for billing, then registrant details*, this can be the same as your billing details, or say those of your company, a good analogy at this point is when you buy a car, you maybe the legal owner, but the log book carries details of the keeper (registrant) which may or may not be one of the same

*Point to note here, the registrant details are available publicly although if registering a .co.uk on behalf of a uk individual, you are allowed to opt out of this display and only have a name on show, remember to choose that option when asked

The cost of a domain name can be as little as £2.78 a year for .co.uk and £8.99 for .com
at this point I better mention .co.uk has to be registered for a minimum of 2 years, and renewed in 2 year blocks, many registrants will let you register a domain name up to 10 years at a time.

Once you have registered your domain name, it is usually set to point at the registrants servers, until your ready to change it to point at your own, to do this usually involves changing something called name servers which will be supplied by your hosting company, for example ns1.budget-hosts.co.uk you would then take that and log into your registrars members area and change the details of the name servers in there, this article cannot go into how as every registrar varies, but there is usually an option somewhere to do this

Once you have changed your name servers, the new information has to propagate though the system, so when you choose to point it at your site, it can take between 24-48 hours before showing as changed

Check your domain name availability below

Type in a domain name

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“Hmmmm” I hear you thinking, “that’s ok, but why would I want to promote other sites on mine” and it is indeed a good question, and also there is a good answer hence the article, Search engines love this kind of mutual linking more commonly known as reciprocal linking to help gauge your popularity

Google amongst others use a special link analysis system to rank web pages amongst their other systems, so the more links you have pointing at you the higher you rank, which is why despite the worries its ok to promote other sites

Another benefit of this scheme is it also works for the directories benefit, which helps them get higher, as they get higher, your more likely to be spotted on there, and around it goes

“Ok” you say “lets get linking”

Before you go rushing off to dominate the world with back links a few things you may wish to consider

• Are the links relevant? Just linking to random site can actually bring the value of the links down, so try and keep them relevant for your site
• Where is your link going to be placed on their site? Some webmasters have page after page of links so yours will never be found
• And how many links are too many? If yours is one of say 400 is it really serving any purpose, the higher up a page you are the more it will be considered a valid link

There is also the problem of doing the link exchange then a few months down the line, your link disappears off their site, so your link back is one way, again highly valued by search engines, but why should you help them, if they wont help you, so be prepared to site down for a while every month or so and check all your back links