Smugmug users ?? Can I pick your brain please

[ricstew]

With a power account I need to purchase a domain name....so I emailed company A to check about the cname thingo that smugmug tells me I need. Company A tell me I need to purchase DNS hosting? Quote ..."You will need to buy DNS hosting with domain name ".....is this correct? I thought I was paying for hosting on Smugmug? They say go with godaddy and I dont need hosting but it doesn't have .au.....
so I am not sure who to believe!

cheers
Jan

[Allann]

Unless you specifically want .au for business reasons (will need an ABN) try for a plain .com, they are so much cheaper. Their godaddy deal is very good and makes setting stuff up really easy. I purchased my domain through SiteGround.com which also gave me a spot to host my blog, and my wife's craft site (with additional domain kathrynscrafts.com).

[ricstew]

I am not sure I really need the .au........it's really only so people have access to private galleries. I cant ever imagine I would sell from there. I do have an ABN as I do real estate as well but have that from a different site. Do you find there is anything different just using .com? Does it impact in any way?
cheers
Jan

[Allann]

No difference (except I save a packet each year in not having .au). In many ways it's more about how you set the site up for search engines that affects traffic not whether you have a .au or not. If it's just for personal use then .com or even .net is fine.

[Speedway]

If its just a personal site .com is all you need and it is the cheapest and easiest to remember. For a business the .au shows you are an Australian company and a lot of businesses register their domain name with all the popular extensions and a few misspellings to ensure uniqueness. As Allann says if you optimise your site for the search engines that is the main director of traffic. Private galleries are easily password protected and having the .au makes no difference to this.
Keith.

[reaction]

as a local site I'd say .au is better
I search with filter for .au all the time

[ricstew]

Phooey....opinion is still split

[campo]

I used godaddy for my smugmug site and i didn't bother going with the .au option. At the moment I actually do a lot of work for another photography company so only a subset of my work actually is done under the banner of my business but if I was to expand my own business, I would likely buy a matching ".com.au" and have both point to the same site.

[ricktas]

if you want a cheap(ish) au, try www.planetdomain.com.au

[para]

I use smugmug as a gallery only really as i have another site that is a au site cost me $22 per 2x years http://www.webcity.com.au
but as Allan said godaddy (smugmug partner) is a pretty good deal.

[etherial]

if you want a cheap(ish) au, try www.planetdomain.com.au

PlanetDomain host mine as well, I find them pretty good.

[NikonNellie]

I have had a Smugmug Power account for about a year now but I don't ever remember having to purchase a domain name - maybe that has changed in the year. I just had to nominate a name which was part of my web address. www.nawimages.smugmug.com. As far as I can remember I just paid the $60 and smugmug did the hosting.

[Art Vandelay]

I have had a Smugmug Power account for about a year now but I don't ever remember having to purchase a domain name - maybe that has changed in the year.

Nellie, you don't 'have' to nominate a domain name, it's only if you want to.

I just set up a basic one recently rather then muck around learning how to build one, or get one built. it uses a spare domain that I'd had for a while through another hoster.

for example it ends up as www.emdacat.com.au rather than www.emdacat.smugmug.com, though this still works as well.

The domain name & emails are still hosted by the original provider but by the miracles of internet technology, (which I don't profess to understand ), it just gets connected to the smugmug site.

[NikonNellie]

Thanks for that Art - I'll have a look as I do have web hosting and a Domain name with Estyles that I won in one of AP's competitions which unfortunately I never got around to doing anything with. It's due for renewal in a week or so. I was just going to let it go and not worry about it. Do you have any idea where in my Smugmug account I would be able to nominate a domain name?

[Art Vandelay]

Nellie,

When logged in, go to tools, then control panel, then the settings tab. it has a space there to enter your domian name. That's the easy bit.

The real changes need to be done by your hosting provider. When you're in that section above, click on the 'what's this' or help next to the domain name section. This takes you to the help pages which outline exactly what you have to ask your provider to change for it to be assigned over to your smugmug site. Copy that and send it off to your provider along with a note saying what you want to do. When they've changed their part, put your domian in the settings on smugmug and it all should work.....

[ricktas]

Most domain registration providers allow you to do a 'domain forwarding' yourself. You just need to login to your account where you signed up for your domain name and look for a setting for domain forwarding. In it, you put any web address you want (use your smugmug one). So when someone types your webaddress, it redirects to your smugmug one. Its fairly easy.

[Dylan & Marianne]

My wife set our site up for us but I can reflect on a couple of things:
name.com.au : I don't really recommend them - a bit low to reply to queries and the mail system is horrible - you have to redirect mail and thankfully there is an option for this
smugmug however seems to have been excellent in terms of search engines - "everlook photography" "Dylan Toh" or "Marianne Lim" gets us first showing! (on google or yahoo)

[Redgum]

Most domain registration providers allow you to do a 'domain forwarding' yourself. You just need to login to your account where you signed up for your domain name and look for a setting for domain forwarding. In it, you put any web address you want (use your smugmug one). So when someone types your webaddress, it redirects to your smugmug one. Its fairly easy.

Rick, I'm not smart on re-directions but why would you want to redirect your domain name to any other site? Why would you not simply use a link if you wanted to get someone to another website? It seems to me that you are paying for hosting of one site and redirecting that to another for which you are also paying a fee? Does it mean that anyone that tries to access your original site is also redirected automatically? There's probably a good reason but I sort of don't get it.
PS: I can understand if the original website is no longer in use but apart from that?

[Allann]

Redgum, redirection is a requirement of many sites like mine. I have a smugmug site but use my own domain name which is registered via SiteGround.com. The smugmug site is only used for photo storage and uses the domain http://allannielsenphotography.com but I also use email allan at allannielsenphotography.com. Smugmug does not support email, which is hosted on SiteGround. Additionally I maintain a blog at http://blog.allannielsenphotography.com, this too is not supported on smugmug and is hosted on my SiteGround site, so hopefully this explains why a redirect from SiteGround to Smugmug is not only required but a good thing. I much prefer a consistant url for my clients instead of getting them to type http://allannielsen.smugmug.com which would occur on a link as opposed to a redirect.

[campo]

Rick, I'm not smart on re-directions but why would you want to redirect your domain name to any other site? Why would you not simply use a link if you wanted to get someone to another website? It seems to me that you are paying for hosting of one site and redirecting that to another for which you are also paying a fee? Does it mean that anyone that tries to access your original site is also redirected automatically? There's probably a good reason but I sort of don't get it.
PS: I can understand if the original website is no longer in use but apart from that?

Basically the good reason is that web hosting services provide only web hosting and not domain name services, and vice versa. In general, not many companies offer a combined service and when they do, it's generally (a) not very good value for money or (b) two separate companies that work closely together to make it appear as one (eg. Smugmug and GoDaddy). As Allan pointed out, sometimes a web host doesn't provide all services associated to a domain name (eg. email). It's a little confusing, but the way it works is actually very flexible.

Whilst Rick describes it as a "redirect", a domain name registration is more like a internet bookmark, it simply tells your browser where to find the server that hosts your website. For example I can change my hosting provider (eg smugmug) to another provider and when i'm ready to switch over i simply switch where my domain name "bookmark" points.