Rezdwan Hamid

Checking Username Or Vanity URL Availability On All Social Networking Sites

Rezdwan Hamid — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Branding, branding, branding. This seems to be a hot topic on most if not all the blogs that I am subscribed to. Today’s tutorial will focus on how to have a consistent branding across a multitude of social networking sites for your username and/or vanity URL.

Getting Consistent Web Branding

For example, you want to brand yourself as the Viral Marketing Coach and you planned to buy viralmarketingcoach.com. That’s great but before you do so, you may want to check if that same brand can be acquired for your username and vanity URL on social networking sites.

You check if twitter.com/viralmarketingcoach is already taken or www.facebook.com/viralmarketingcoach exists. If it has not been taken yet, you’re in luck and you can start registering viralmarketingcoach.com and proceed to register for a Twitter account with viralmarketingcoach as your username or you start a Facebook fan page and get the vanity URL when the time comes.

Checking Username Or URL Availability

What if Twitter and Facebook is not the only place where you want to push your branding? Maybe your site will be more niche and getting accounts at other social networking sites will be more suitable to attract your intended audience. How can you easily check multiple social networking sites to make sure that your username or vanity URL has not been taken yet?

Simple. You go to namechk to check for your username and vanity URL availability. At the time of this writing, namechk can go through 149 social networking and social bookmarking sites. Here’s a short description of their site.

Check to see if your desired username or vanity url is still available at dozens of popular Social Networking and Social Bookmarking websites. Promote your brand consistently by registering a username that is still available on the majority of the most popular sites. Find the best username with namechk.

How To Check Your Username

All you need to do is to type in your desired username and click on the chk button. If you absolutely have to make sure that your username is available for all 149 sites, click on the Show All (149) text below the box before you click on the chk button.

Great idea, right? Do note that it may not be 100% accurate. When you see a result that says taken, click on the result to double-check that it is really unavailable. That is if you are concerned about getting your username with your brand on that site. Otherwise, it may not matter at all. Good luck branding!

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Blog Redesign In Under 3 Hours Using Headway

Rezdwan Hamid — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

In case you didn’t know it yet, my blog theme is designed by yours truly. This is made possible by Headway, a super flexible WordPress theme if I can put it that way. The previous design had been used for about six months and somehow I felt it is time for a blog redesign. Here’s how it looked like before and after the redesign.

No Experience Necessary

Before I go on, let me declare that I am not a web programmer or designer by trade. I just love looking at nice theme designs and try to incorporate some of the best parts into my blog. Let’s just say I get inspiration from other good designs.

There are a few things that I do on my own when I come up with a WordPress theme design. This is more for branding and to give my blog a character of its own. Here are some things that I would recommend that you do on your own before you start on your own blog design.

Color Scheme

Have you noticed how some design seems to have the right color combination? They have something called a color scheme. I’m not an expert at this but I have found a tool that you can use to create your own color scheme or use an existing one. This tool is called Kuler and it is created by Adobe.

There is a whole bunch of color schemes created by other users and you can create one for yourself too. Copy down the color scheme that you like or make it into an index card of some sort like I did for mine. It will be easier for you to refer to later. Useful for consistent branding across multiple sites.

Typography

The fonts that is used for your WordPress theme also affects the look and feel for your blog. My choice for the overall font of my blog is Verdana. As for the headings and subheadings, I used the Coolvetica font available from www.dafont.com. You’ll need the WP-Cufon plugin to render the font for your WordPress blog.

Don’t go overboard with this. Use two or three types of fonts at most. You may think that it is cool to mix and match a variety of fonts for your blog but it’s not. It will only serve to make your blog look like a jumbled mess. You may also want to read some good practices for font selection and sizes for blogs.

Post And Sidebar Width

How wide should the post and sidebar width be? It depends on personal preferences. For this new redesigned theme, I’m using 640px for the post width and 300px for the sidebar width.

Embedded video has a few standard resolutions and one of them is having a width of 640px. That’s the reason for the my post width. As for the sidebar width, it will be for the future should I decide to add banners which usually comes in widths such as 300px or 125px. You may want to put this sort of consideration into your theme design.

Blog Redesign Using Headway

Headway made it possible for me to redesign my blog in under three hours. Of course I already had a very good idea what the new design will be like before I started. I then proceeded by resetting Headway to its factory settings and worked my way up from there.

Actually, I used a top-down approach. I started with the header, then the body and lastly the footer. I am still using a fluid header and footer format (which are selectable in the Visual Editor). After that, I work my way through the font colors, borders, backgrounds, sizes and etc.

I have used Headway since version 1.0 and it has only gotten better and easier to use and design your own blog theme. If you are adventurous enough to design your own blog theme, go get Headway today.

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Taking Care Of WordPress Security Using Secure WordPress Plugin

Rezdwan Hamid — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Recently, there has been a lot of WordPress blogs that was attacked or exploited. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, you should be concerned about securing it from hacking attempts apart from having a regular backup. There’s a plugin that I would like to introduce to you that takes care of a few security aspects of your WordPress blog.

Popularity Makes WordPress A Target

First and foremost, WordPress is not a weak blogging platform that is vulnerable to attacks. Every web application is and that’s because you can’t have a perfect or hacker-proof web application. It’s just not possible and you have to understand this.

The fact that WordPress is prone to attacks is because of its popularity and it is widely used by most bloggers as a blogging platform. The least we could do is to minimize those security loopholes.

Every web hosting environment is configured differently and there are some that is not secured properly. You could suggest preventive measures to your web hosting provider but on your part, you are still responsible for securing your own data, in this case, your own WordPress blog.

Features Of Secure WordPress Plugin

On its own, WordPress is quite secure but there is more that you can do to secure your WordPress blog. This blog post shall focus on the Secure WordPress plugin that should take care of a few security aspects of your blog without having you to know much about it.

The Secure WordPress plugin is created by Site Security Monitor and it installs like any other plugins and some configuration can be made after installation. Here are some of the things that the plugin will do for your WordPress blog automatically after installation and configuration. Please note that these are not the full features of the plugin.

Removes error information on login page
The WordPress login page will tell you the exact error when you enter the wrong username or password. This vulnerability means that your username can be guessed and what’s left is to for the hacker to find the correct password until he finds it. Secure WordPress plugin gets around this by not displaying the error message at all.
Adds index.php plugin directory (virtual)
If the file and folder permissions for your WordPress blog is not set correctly, the plugin directory can actually be viewed and possibly edited from outside. Having an index.php file in the plugin directory will at least hide the contents of your plugin directory from prying eyes.
Removes the WordPress version except in the administration area
With every update, WordPress will most likely fix some security issues for the earlier version. That is why you are always encouraged to update your WordPress blog immediately when it is available. It very easy to know what version of WordPress you are using just by looking at the source file. Hide your WordPress version for when you have not updated it yet.
Removes WordPress core, plugins and themes update information for non-admins
This might not concern you if you are the only one using your blog but if there are other users or an attacker manage to create an account, it is a good idea that they do not know of your WordPress core, themes and plugins that needs updating. This is to prevent any hacking attempt on older version of those files that are vulnerable.
Block bad queries
This is a little advanced for me but what I can understand is that a hacker can attempt to hack into your blog using SQL injection. This method requires the hacker to add a piece of long string to the end your blog URL and one way to stop them is to block those bad queries. Secure WordPress plugin is included with this feature.

Securing Your WordPress Blog

Of course there are other things that you can do to make your WordPress blog more secure besides installing the Secure WordPress plugin. Simple things such as using a password that is hard to guess and not using admin as your WordPress username are good starting points.

I would recommend that you install the Secure WordPress plugin because of how easy it is to use. For someone who is new to WordPress or even a web hosting environment, this plugin takes care of those things that you might otherwise overlook or have no knowledge about.

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The Similarities Between Cooking And Blogging

Rezdwan Hamid — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

My mum makes some of the most delicious dishes I’ve ever tasted. I’m not saying that just because she’s my mum but others have complimented on her cooking too. Makes me wonder, how did she get so good at cooking? Now, this blog post is not about her or her cooking but about your blogging skills.

Cooking And Blogging

I started to see the similarities between cooking and blogging. Yes, I know, it’s kind of corny until you’ve read the rest of this blog post. If I were to ask my mum how she got so good at cooking, I bet she couldn’t explain it and would just say that she has done it all her life and probably that’s why.

It seems that people with these type of skills that is learned through years of experience can never truly explain how certain things are done. They simply know how to do it but they can’t really tell you how it’s done. They will probably have problems teaching others these skills that they have too.

How To Practice Blogging

If you have blogged for any amount of time, you may come across the same situation. A friend might suddenly ask you about how you are able to write blog posts after blog posts. I have been asked that question a few times before and the only answer I can give to them is that it comes with practice.

How do you practice blogging anyway? Is there some exercise or training that you can do to improve your blogging skills? Well, let’s take a look at how my mum cooks and maybe we can learn and apply it from there.

She Cooks Every Day

My mum cooks almost every day without fail. Whether everyone is out at school or work, they will definitely have at least one meal at home. It has become my mum’s responsibility to cook. Being responsible for the daily meals of everyone in the house means she gets to practice cooking every day.

The blogger’s job is to provide new blog posts. Not necessarily on a daily basis but enough for the readers to consume at their leisure. It has become a responsibility for the blogger to provide some sort of mind sustenance for the reader and by doing so, bloggers get to practice their craft.

She’s Willing To Try New Recipes

Whenever I make a request for a new dish or when she found out about a dish she has never cooked before, she’ll start finding out what ingredients will be needed, how to prepare it and etc. This adds to her available menu and someone like me gets to enjoy a variety of food.

You should focus on the niche that your blog is about but adding a mix to it surely will not do any harm. Give more variety in your blogging style so that it won’t be monotonous to your readers.

She’s Not Bothered By Lack Of Ingredients

There were occasions when she had to suddenly come up with a few dishes. Instead of fretting over the lack of ingredients that she can work with, she would improvise. It’s not a sloppy job either and she truly amazes me when she comes up with dishes at such short notice.

Just because you are running short on time to write a blog post or you have very little idea about what to write next, doesn’t mean you are no good at blogging. You just have to be more creative and start writing with what you have. There were times when I felt that I can’t write a single post but starting to write the little bits and pieces that’s in my head will generate more content for me to write.

She Earns A Living From It

As far back as I can remember about her work life, she has always held a job which requires her to cook. She has tried taking orders for offices, helped at my auntie’s stall, cooked for a child care center and the list goes on. It is almost like she has tried anything that could monetize her skills.

Getting monetary reward for your blogging efforts will definitely be a nice thing. There are many ways to monetize your blog so start considering the options that is available to you.

She Cooks With Love

Lastly but most importantly, she cooks with love. This may well be the last ingredient to her fantastic cooking skill. There is a wide difference between having to do something and wanting to do something. My mum just wants to cook for her family. Simple as that.

The same could be said about why you want to blog. You just feel like it. You just blog because you want to give something to your readers even if you get nothing in return for your efforts. That’s called blogging with love. Kind of weird for me to say that.

Getting Inspired By Others

Anyway, what have you learned from this blog post today? Do you now see the similarities between cooking and blogging? Maybe, we can also get inspiration from others just by looking at how they are dedicated at what they do and apply it to blogging. Who inspires you to blog today?

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Staying On The Safe Side Will Not Make You A Good Blogger

Rezdwan Hamid — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

If you want to have any chance of being a good blogger, you cannot stay on the safe side. By that, I do not mean you are entitled to cross the line when it comes to politic, religion, race and etc. You have to stand out among the crowd and only those brave enough to make themselves heard will have a higher chance of being noticed.

Character Of A Blog

You see, a blog embodies the character of the blogger. How the blogger feel or think is clearly shown through his writings. If you are going to be a dull person who wants to stay on the safe side, your blog will probably be the same. And when that happens, your contents will not attract as much attention as you want it to.

Let’s do the opposite then. Instead, listen to your heart and really let out whatever that you feel like writing. Don’t start thinking about what people will think and if others can accept what you have to say. Censoring yourself is like doing a great disservice to your own creativity.

Don’t Hamper Your Creativity

Imagine a boss that keeps telling you that you can’t do this and you can’t do that. You hate him because he’s blocking your creativity. You also have opinions or principles that you believe in. Don’t let that voice in your head (aka virtual boss) tell you how you should write your blog post.

Just say it like you mean it! The people who doesn’t like it, screw them. You are ruffling feathers to find the best readers for your blog. People who like you for who you are. People who share the same feelings and thoughts just like you. They want to connect with you and the only way to do that is to just be yourself.

Getting Haters For Your Blog

Just like getting fans for your blog, getting haters is also good. It simply means you have ruffled some feathers and got a reaction to it. If you’re still squeamish about it, here’s a famous quote from Winston Churchill. By the way, thanks to @mpolicha for introducing me to this great quote.

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Got the idea yet? Take it as a compliment and not something that you should avoid. Stand up for something you believe in. Let no one tell you otherwise. That’s called having a principle. Don’t you just love someone with a principle? One more thing, don’t apologize for anything that you believe in.

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How To Change Your Avatar In WordPress

Rezdwan Hamid — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

This should be fairly easy to most of you but an insider (actually, Google AdWords Keyword Tool ) told me that there are 320 searches monthly for the phrase how to change wordpress avatar. Clearly, there are some people who doesn’t know how to do this and this tutorial is written to address it.

A Little Bit About Avatar

Here’s a quote from Wikipedia about what is an avatar and how it came to be.

An avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) or a one-dimensional username used on Internet forums and other communities, or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs. It is an object representing the user. The term “avatar” can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user. This sense of the word was coined by Neal Stephenson in 1992 novel Snow Crash, who co-opted it from the Sanskrit word avatāra, which is a concept similar to that of incarnation.

Now, we are talking about an avatar that appears only in WordPress comments and posts which is handled by Gravatar and here’s what they have to say.

Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

Adding And Changing Your Avatar

Simply put, the image or photo that appears in WordPress blogs, be it on wordpress.com or a self-hosted WordPress blog, that is called an avatar, is actually controlled by what you submit to Gravatar. All you need is a free account from Gravatar.

The advantage of Gravatar is that you now have one central place to update your image and all comments that has been previously left on WordPress blogs will now be reflected with the new image. That’s web branding across the Internet.

You can upload any number of images and link each one to a different email address that you want. When you leave a comment on a WordPress blog, the avatar that is linked to the email address you use will now appear beside your comment. That was simple, wasn’t it?

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Blogging Is A Constant Battle If You Lose Your Motivation

Rezdwan Hamid — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve blogged for more than six months now. Since then, I have blogged consistently. There are a little ups and downs along the way but I manage to churn out five blog posts a week on average. I’ve passed the point where most aspiring bloggers will just give up on their new blog.

Sixth Month Blog Failure Point

This means that a new blogger will suddenly feel like they have no more motivation to keep on blogging and just abandon or never write and publish any blog post again. It usually happens six months after a blog has been started. By the way, it’s a well-known statistics that most blogs never live past six months.

Two months ago, I was chatting with some friends that I have blogged for about five months already and most bloggers will usually give up at the sixth month point. That’s when one of them remarked by saying, “your test is here already“. Never really thought about it that way but I guess it’s true.

At the sixth month point, every blogger will be tested. They have two choices, either they keep on blogging or just stop right there and then and become part of the statistic. I am glad that I have passed the test and it is my sincere wish to keep on blogging.

Motivation And Distraction

There are times when I could wake up very early in the morning, write a 1,000 word blog post in an hour or two and have it published by the next hour. Sometimes, I will sit down in front of the computer and can’t even write more than 300 words. The worst are those days when I could write nothing at all.

I am constantly distracted when I am online. TweetDeck (to check Twitter and Facebook updates), email and etc. contributes to the distraction but they are not entirely to blame. It all boils down to your own discipline. Something that I really need to work on. I’m sure you have had similar experiences.

Finding Your Motivation And Passion

The real problem for me is not that I have lost my motivation to blog but I do forget what it is that motivates me in the first place. This may sound corny to some but the truth is, I really love to share what I have learned with others and my blog is an outlet for me to share my knowledge.

Since the first time I had an Internet connection and started browsing the web, I’ve always wanted to start site of my own. I have thought of running a simple site about my interest, set up forums for my hobby and a couple of countless others. None of them gave me the satisfaction that I get from this blog.

I started to reflect back on why I started this blog. The motivation was really to teach anyone who is willing to learn how to build a site on their own at the time. Now it is more specifically for anyone who wishes to start their own blog. And I share all of this information for free too. Why do I even do that? Maybe it is passion.

Money Is Just A Reward

I do recognize that I will want to monetize this blog one way or another in the future but it will be just a reward and not the motivational factor. Neither should you start a blog with the thought of making money only. That’s because, when the money doesn’t come in, will you honestly say you can keep on blogging?

Take a look back at your own motivation. Why do you start a blog or want to start a blog in the first place? What is your passion and how can it help others? Passion in the topic that you are blogging about will definitely help to keep you going. I know that it did for me and I hope that you can be motivated and passionate about the topic of your blog too.

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Getting A WordPress Theme When You Are On A Tight Budget

Rezdwan Hamid — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

I was looking around for a suitable WordPress theme for my wife’s home-based bakery business. She isn’t much of a blogger but I want her site to leverage on a WordPress platform which will be much easier to use and maintain. The main concern is to have a site that can showcase her works, so a photo gallery is a must.

Portfolio Type WordPress Theme

Basically, what’s needed is a blog that uses a portfolio theme, so to speak. I’ve seen WordPress themes on WooThemes, NattyWP and Templatic but I have found nothing that is suitable enough for the job. There are nice themes there but I want something that has less emphasis on the blog posts.

That is when I came across, the Movement WordPress theme on ThemeForest. It looks great with all that sliding image effects and beautiful photo and video gallery option. The best part is, it only cost $32 if I were to buy it.

While most premium WordPress themes that I have seen around costs around $60-$70 (and they may or may not include the PSD files for customization), $32 is a bargain. I didn’t buy it outright as I wanted to look around at other WordPress themes on ThemeForest for that kind of price.

Finding The Right WordPress Theme

Indeed, I did find another beautiful theme and this time, I believe I have found what I am looking for. I have a gag order from my wife and unable to release the name of the chosen theme right now.

What I like about this theme is that it veers away from the usual blog outlook. Everything is on one page and when you choose a link to another page, it nicely scrolls vertically. The blog posts are presented in a way like they are news or updates on a static HTML site rather than blog posts.

Choosing A Suitable WordPress Theme

I’m impressed and the price is also $32. Not only that, the theme that I have chosen also comes with the PSD files and it can be used to further customize the images in it if you are good with Adobe Photoshop. Not that it is necessary but it is an option that you might want to consider to make a theme more unique.

ThemeForest has a huge collection of WordPress themes (and even Joomla or Magento) to choose from. Their offerings comes from many themes developers and I am sure that you should be able to find something suitable for your WordPress blog. That could also be a problem actually. Too many to choose from.

What I would suggest is that you choose a category (like WordPress, Magento or Joomla) and then sort them by rating, sales or price. Preview the theme to see what it looks like and also read the comments left by previous users. This can give you an idea of suggestions or problems related to the theme that you may come across.

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You Don’t Have To Be A Blogger To Have A Blog

Rezdwan Hamid — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

My wife runs a small home-based bakery where she takes orders online (via email and private messaging on social networks) or offline. She has a domain name for this small business of hers but it isn’t really put to good use as she thinks that she isn’t much of a blogger.

Blogging For Non-bloggers

It is partly my fault for insisting that she uses a blogging platform like WordPress for her site and updating it as often as she can. Being a WordPress pro (that is an overstatement ), I helped her install WordPress for her site.

After that, I left it to her to decide on a WordPress theme and how she wants her blog organized (pages, posts and etc.). Nothing came out of it as she isn’t really interested in blogging and prefers to connect with her customers through social networking sites.

Advantage Of Blogging

There is nothing wrong with that but being in business today, you need a website of some sort. Even if you are in an offline niche, it will be easier to point potential customers to your website for more information. It is what customers have come to expect. Every business should have a website now.

A blog has an advantage of being more interactive. The reason for that is the commenting system. You write a blog post and your visitors leave a comment for it. You reply to those comments and the interaction can go on and on. That is the idea of blogging. Create an interaction and conversation.

WordPress As A Backend

What if you are in business and you are not keen to interact by blogging? Does that rule out the possibility of installing WordPress for your blog? Not really. WordPress has matured beyond just being a blogging platform. So much so that it is described as a CMS (content management system) today.

What most people love about WordPress is how easy it is to maintain and update without being a techno geek. That is what I told my wife. I think she has the impression that blogging is a lot of work when she looked at the amount of time I spend on my blog. I still don’t know how to convince her otherwise.

The reason that I spend a lot of time on my blog is because I think of myself as a blogger and I churn out five posts a week. That doesn’t mean that every blogger has to follow my style. It is just a routine that I have set for myself. You can also be a blogger by writing one blog post per week. Who says that’s wrong?

WordPress Strategies For Non-blogger

Nonetheless, the strategy for my wife must change. There are two important things to consider here. No, in fact three. First, she must have a website for her business. I still insist on using WordPress because of how easy it is to use and maintain. Anyway, I’m going to be the one that maintains it.

At the very least, it should give more information to her customer of what her business is about, the offerings, a price list of some sort and how they can place an order or how to contact her.

Secondly, the website should be updated at least weekly so that it doesn’t look stale. Static HTML website are so 90s. Don’t believe me, look at other business websites and there is a high chance that they have a link to their blog somewhere. Businesses have come to understand that keeping customers updated through a blog is like a standard.

So, in my wife’s case, we got a WordPress theme from ThemeForest. She wanted a theme that will showcase her cakes, cookies and puddings. I wanted her to at least be able to update it once a week with news but not necessarily a blog post (which means less work for her). We found a theme that will do the job. It looks more like a CMS than a blog.

Thirdly, she must have a mailing list. At the moment, she only connects with her customers through SMS and social networking sites like Facebook and Multiply. It is not doing as well as she wanted it to be and the reason for that is because they are not targeted traffic. She doesn’t have a specific group of people to contact when it comes to her business.

That’s where I think her business is lacking. No specific list of customers to connect with. In my opinion, she has trouble getting repeat sales because of this. Social networking sites are great for making connections. It would be a waste not to bring those connections to your site and ultimately to your mailing list.

WordPress Site And Mailing List

What’s going to happen now is a redesign of her site using WordPress as the backend and a nice CMS-like theme for the frontend. The site will showcase her works through a gallery of photos and visitors can read the latest news there. Both potential and existing customers can also subscribe to her mailing list for news and updates.

I’ve not decided if she will be using AWeber or MailChimp. It is her business after all but I am going to be the one to set it up for her. It has to be a simple solution where she can easily send a broadcast to her mailing list on a regular basis.

Lessons Learned From This Experience

Looking at this experience, I’ve come to realize that other small business owners can also follow this simple strategy. Get a domain name, install WordPress and get a nice theme that is suitable for their business. Next, use an autoresponder service like AWeber, GetResponse or MailChimp to start collecting email addresses for their own mailing list.

The other thing I realize is that you don’t have to be a blogger to have a blog. WordPress takes the hassle out of maintaining a site and a business owner can easily write a blog post and have it published in matter of minutes. With the right theme, it doesn’t have to look or feel like a blog post. Something that a business might want for their own site.

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Rethinking WHOIS Privacy To Build Online Credibility

Rezdwan Hamid — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

In my earlier report, 7 Secrets Of Cheap Web Hosting (which is no longer offered for download), there is one section where I talked about WHOIS privacy and how it affects you as an owner of a domain name. My views on WHOIS privacy have changed and there are a few reasons why.

Details In A WHOIS Record

A WHOIS record contain details such as your name, email address, telephone number and address. It is mandatory to give these details when you register a new domain name. Law enforcement, attorneys and etc. will need to know these details should the need arises.

The problem with WHOIS record is that it is public. Anyone can run a WHOIS query and get those details. One way to protect these details is by registering for a domain name with a registrar that offers WHOIS privacy service. Some even offer this additional service at no extra cost.

You would still have to give your actual details when you register for a new domain name. The WHOIS privacy service would then mask or replace your details with the privacy service provider’s details.

Privacy Versus Anonymity

Do not mix up privacy with anonymity. Privacy is when you do not want others to intrude into your personal life. Anonymity is when you are doing something illegal and you do not want people to know who you are.

Spammers and scammers have WHOIS privacy on their domain names because they are not doing something legit. They want to remain anonymous to law enforcement agencies and lawyers. This isn’t what WHOIS privacy service was intended for.

Safety From Spammers And Scammers

I would still maintain that it is a good idea to keep your WHOIS record private if you are running a personal blog or website. You wouldn’t want to get mails or phone calls at home from spammers. This would be an invasion of your privacy. It is also to protect you from scams.

On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to hide your contact information if you are running an online business. Doing so will only reduce your credibility. Articles on safe online shopping suggests checking the WHOIS record to check the credibility of an online business.

For example, if you were to find a product you were looking for on a website and you ran a query for its WHOIS record only to find that it is private, would you buy from that website? The question in your head could be, why would a business want to hide their contact information?

Building Credibility Without Compromising Privacy

Keep your online business details public without compromising your privacy. You should know by now that it is a good idea to register for a business when you start selling online. Use your company name, address and contact number when you register for a new domain name.

This way, you keep your business and personal details separate. At the same time, you are building credibility. I’m not saying that you can’t sell anything online in your own name but selling as a business entity will give a more professional impression to your customers.

Getting WHOIS Privacy Or Not

So, what do you do now? If you have WHOIS privacy service for your online business domain names, switch it off. Get your registrar or web hosting provider to help you with this if you don’t know how.

As for personal domain names, check with your registrar or web hosting provider if they offer WHOIS privacy service and how much it would cost you. If they don’t offer it, you can find other registrars that offer this service for free when you transfer your domain name to them.

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