As we’ve already established I’m an organization and neat freak. One place where that doesn’t seem to carry over is in my online affairs. I have domains at 3 different registrars and strewn across about 4 different hosts. I move domains from host to host without removing them from the old host. Half the times I don’t know when domains are expiring thanks to 1&1′s crappy control panel so I get surprise credit card charges. Other times I actually have to do a whois to see where my domains are hosted. 
Yesterday, I started up yet another DreamHost account. DreamHost may serve pages especially database powered sites slowly and while I’ve complained about them before DreamHost just makes since for me. They’re cheap and allow unlimited domains, their custom control panel is really top notch and makes managing multiple domains super easy even though their CP crawls along like a turtle.
With Dreamhost my thoughts are I’d host all my redirected domains there along with sites I’m just starting out, once they gain some momentum and become self sufficient I’ll move them to one of my VPS’s or maybe a dedicated server.
Yesterday I spent a good two hours updating the DNS for all those domains I was moving to DreamHost. GoDaddy makes it super easy to update multiple domains at once. Meanwhile 1&1 sucks, you have to update each domain individually, I suppose this is to deter you from moving away from their hosting services. It also took me sometime to add all the domains over at Dreamhost because of their slow control panel.
Another thing about 1&1 is there is no way to view your domain’s expiration date, you have to go to https://cancel.1and1.com and start the cancellation process to see the expiry dates which again I believe is so they can charge you for another year, sometimes without you even knowing about it. Which is ridiculous. In the future I’m going to start moving domains to GoDaddy little by little as soon as I have a few spare bucks.
Today I decided to get things in order and made a spread sheet with all my domain names, registrar, expiration dates, and where they’re hosted. I wound up doing a whois on all my 1&1 domains as it’s easier than monkeying around in their CP. I’m already enjoying it with a few clicks I can sort by date and see what is expiring before it does and decide to renew or not. I have so many redirects tomorrow I plan on spending a couple of hours writing out plans for each domain. If I cannot plan for a domain I’m going to let it expire, no sense wasting money for a domain I’m not using. 
How about you..How do you manage your domain portfolio and hosting?
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