One of my favorite clients nearly lost their domain name last week. The saga is longer that the usual Byte. But I think it’s important…

Their domain name was registered many years ago by a company that no longer provides web hosting. So, that company didn’t renew the domain name.

Their current web host doesn’t have access to change the name (the original registrars do). So, they didn’t renew the name.

The administrative contact email address on the domain name record was still good – but either that person never received an email notification to renew or they received it and didn’t know what it was.

I checked the date on domain name a month before – but the database I checked was wrong. In fact, I checked two public databases and they were both wrong. Both databases said the name was renewed through November 2004.

Well, one day last week their email quit working. The web site still worked. We called the current ISP/web host and they said the domain name was having troubles. Together we checked 3 public databases that provide information on domain names. Two said the name should be good – one said it was expired. The database with the correct information was Network Solutions.

Unfortunately the current ISP could not renew the domain name because they were not the original registrars. I could not buy the domain name because according to my resources it was not available – it was renewed to 2004. Finally I called the folks who originally registered the name and they were able to renew it for us. (All of this took a day.)

We were lucky that no one else bought the domain name while it was expired. We also were lucky because we were able to reach the original registrars. So – take a minute today to visit Network Solutions.

• Make sure that the info on your domain name record is up-to-date.
• Make sure that you know who should renew the name.
• Make sure they know they should renew the name.
• Finally make sure you both know the date it needs to be renewed.

I hope this saves someone the scare that we got – or worse!