The danger of not keeping your domain information up to date
I had an interesting experience over the weekend. Since
1998 I have owned my own domain and use the web site mainly for development
purposes as well as for my email. Naturally, I have already had to renewed
my domain once. Well the problem is that when I registered the domain I was
living in a different apartment and I had a different email address.
Stupidly I had forgotten to update the domain owner information at Network
Solutions which meant that I never received any email or snail mail to indicate
that my domain registration was about to expire.
I only realised something was wrong when I tried to access my web site and I
got back the message from the browser that it could not find the web site. Of
course as I use the domain as my private email address it meant that I could
receive mail and any one who sent me mail received a message back saying that
the domain did not exist. Luckly I have a back email account with yahoo.
I quickly realised the problem and went to the network solutions /verisign
web site in order to renew the account. Guess what response I got when I
selected the link to renew a domain :" Sorry the site is being redesigned and is
not available due to maintainence". Wonderful, no email, no web site and no way
of renewing the account !!!
Luckly the network solutions site was available later in the day, I renewed
the account and 24 hours later everything is working
perfectly.