There was bad news for one New England Church this week as they learned they’d forgotten to renew their domain name. To make things worse, the name was purchased by people with something very different than Bibles on their mind.
The mix-up happened a few weeks ago when the church changed Internet service providers and the church failed to keep track of the domain’s expiry date. The church’s pastor said he believed the church could keep its Web site name but the old service provider put the address up for sale and it was bought by a pornographic Web site.
The church has spent the last few weeks trying to figure out how this happened, he said, and recently received a letter from the Internet service provider admitting it made a mistake by selling the domain name.
The pastor said the Internet company told him pornographic sites often like to buy Web addresses once used by churches. Although the mistake was troubling, the pastor was able to have some sense of humor about it.
"It will be interesting to see who shows up to church now," he said. (Quotes from SeaCoastOnline.com)
So what can you use to keep track of your domains? I’m sure many of you have domains spread across multiple registrars after seeing a special offers here and there. Its not unusual for people to call us up and admit that they’ve forgotten WHERE they registered their domain, let alone WHEN it expires. We used to do the same thing ourselves.
How can you make sure that you never end up in the same situation as the church?
- We use a product called "Domain Punch Pro" to keep details on all our domains and those of our clients. It’s available for $129 from DomainPunch.com and soon pays for itself if your domains are valuable and important to your company. We really haven’t had any domain registration problems since buying it and its also helped notify us when several great domains that have dropped.
- Use the innovative domain registrar called Rebel.com . Their free software allows you to track all your domains across all registrars.
- We register all important domain names for at least three years. Not only does this provide increased security, but it provides a boost in search engine rankings. Google likes to see sites where the owner has made a long-term commitment.
- Finally, for those of you serious about looking after multiple domain names, you can always become a reseller. Our site, AllediaDomains.com is affiliated with ResellerClub.com. Not only do we get cheap domain registrations but we can add registrar locks on to valuable domains and easily search through expiry dates. One added advantage is that our clients can register their domains in a place that is very simple for us to manage. The downside is that although you can get started with a refundable deposit of $199, you need to put down $499 to start getting the big discounts.
