Keep Track of your Domain Names!!

Wow, last week was such a mess and I wouldn't want anyone to have to go through this! Make sure you always keep track of your domain names and know exactly when they expire. The safest way to handle this is have all of your domain names auto-renew. Here's what happened to me...

First of all, a little back ground...
Last year I had bartered with a gal. She bought/gave me the domain name wahmstatedirectory.com and I in return gave her some free advertising. (Keep in mind she is a reseller for a domain name service so she was able to get the domain name much cheaper which is a great thing about bartering.)

When I bartered with her I wasn't too familiar with how domain names, hosting and all those things really worked. Thankfully, she had set the domain name up in my name. But, I never recieved an announcement/email that this domain was about to expire and of course forgot that it was getting to be that time. I was going to update something on my site to find out that the domain name had expired.

I tried going to the website where the name had been purchased from only for them to tell me that my account and name had expired.

I tried emailing the reseller that I had bartered with to see if she knew of something I could do. To this I hadn't recieved a response.

I tried to re-purchase the domain name only to be told that it wasn't available.

I tried emailing the company the name was purchased through. Their response back was that I needed to either contact the reseller OR wait 45 days to be able to re-purchase it. I had already told them that I tried contacting the reseller and that I was the owner of this name! To this I repsonded to them in a 'not as nice way' that I was the owner of this name and if they would kindly check the Who Is information I would be found as the owner. Why couldn't I renew my own name myself and that I wasn't hearing back from the reseller.

I guess sometimes getting a little huffy is in order because luckily then I recieved a reply from another customer service representative and she gladly helped me get the domain going again.

Unfortuantely, my site was down for 7 days :( but, it was taken care of. I don't know about you but I go crazy when my site is down for more than 10 minutes. Not alone 7 days and I dreaded the thought of it being down for 45. One lost visitor could cause you to loose that potential client/customer/visitor for life.

I also did run into another small problem while renewing this name that is much needed to comment on for those who don't know any better. My purpose of this post is not to bash the company ... so I won't go into dirty details. Just ALWAYS remember that you can purchase domain names at very reasonable prices. For example at Mommy's Helper's Domain & Hosting Services you can purchase a domain name for only $7.95 a year. Not $29.95 a year that I had to pay to renew this domain! Of course there are many other options out there and they may even be cheaper than the $7.95 too. But, there's a HUGE difference between $7.95 and $29.95 a year. If you come across a site with the name you're looking for with a price tag like that...search elsewhere! Save yourself a buck or in this case...quite a few bucks!