Wednesday, May 04, 2005

I just realized that my time is running out fast for fixing something dumb I did with my domain name last year.

I've had that doctorlizardo.com (where all my stuff is hosted) through Yahoo Geocities for a while. Last year about this time I got a notice that my license on the domain name was running out and I'd better renew it posthaste.

Now, normally I do look at forms and things extremely closely and thus avoid being scammed. And I wasn't exactly scammed... But I did end up unbeknownst to me switching my domain name registration to some dang Australian registry service, instead of simply renewing it where I was, which is clearly what they intended to make me think I was doing.

So as of tomorrow my time on that Australian registry is up if I don't cough up some USD into their Aussie coffers. Now I have to figure out how to get it back to Yahoo--or whatever--in a day.

It's one of those things that I know enough about to screw it up, but then only really learn about it in depth when I'm trying to fix whatever I did.

5 comments:

Tim said...

Transferring is pretty simple most of the time. You normally just have to go to the company you want to switch to, sign up to transfer your domain, and, after asking you a few questions to verify you're the legit owner, it gets swapped over. It's usually just a couple of steps.

liz said...

Huh--I guess Melbourne IT is related to Yahoo after all. The only way I was able to figure this out was to read all the way through the small-print agreement before I clicked "accept" on upgrading my Yahoo services.

Boy, they sure seemed like one of those domain-name registry headhunter companies. I told them so in the "comments" section when I renewed.

argotnaut said...

Transferring can be simple, but if you ever want to do that, you should do it well in advance -- a couple of months before expiration, at the very least. Registrars don't want you to switch, of course, so you often have to jump through ridiculous hoops to get the transfer to go through. For your own "security," of course. And then if your domain actually expires, you'll have a month or two to pay an outrageous amount to get it back. Don't even think about letting it expire and repurchasing it! After the time period in which you can "salvage" it, some squatter will grab it and try to resell it.

argotnaut said...

Transferring can be simple, but if you ever want to do that, you should do it well in advance -- a couple of months before expiration, at the very least. Registrars don't want you to switch, of course, so you often have to jump through ridiculous hoops to get the transfer to go through. For your own "security," of course. And then if your domain actually expires, you'll have a month or two to pay an outrageous amount to get it back. Don't even think about letting it expire and repurchasing it! After the time period in which you can "salvage" it, some squatter will grab it and try to resell it.

liz said...

Anyway, as I discovered, it was still Yahoo after all.