“Why is my website down?”

I recently had a phone call from a client who was frantic about how their website and e-mail had suddenly stopped working a few days prior.  We were receiving the phone calls because we just so happened to have made some DNS changes per the clients request.  Naturally they assumed we had broken something even though for the first 24 hours it worked perfectly.  Once we got around to actually doing a lookup on the domain name (it wasn’t registered through us) we discovered the domain had expired the day before it went missing on the Internet.

Now we had some real information and now the client realized we had not broken things but it was their own negligence that caused the issue, she wanted to know how to get the domain renewed and her site online and e-mail flowing again.  I couldn’t help her mostly because it wasn’t registered through us and to make matters worse, they didn’t have a good relationship with the domain registrant (a bad split in the business) who STILL owned the domain.  Since she didn’t have a good feeling about how things were going to go, she asked if she could just re-order the domain name since it was “expired”.  Now for the meat…

“Where is my domain name?”

I had to inform her of the lengthy process involved in the life of an expired domain.  First, the domain expires and about 24-48 hours later, it drops off the face of the Internet and the planet.  Like you never existed, your site goes dark and the e-mail stops completely only to be returned to the sender with an obscure error message.  If the domain isn’t renewed, it will remain in the expired state for approximately 30 days.

“If it’s expired, can’t I just re-order the domain now?”

I’m afraid not.  If the domain isn’t renewed in those first 30 days, it goes into what I call “pergatory” or RGP which stands for Redemption Grace Period.  RGP is an additional 30 days (29 for some, 45 for others) which is a given grace period to allow the domain registrant the opportunity once more to get their domain name back.  The cost of this RGP?  Depends but our Registrar eNom charges $250.  I’ve seen some as low as $150 and some may even be higher.  Even after this RGP, then comes the ERGP or the Extended Redemption Grace Period.  So your domain is held for you a few days more to give you that one more chance to grab it back.

“Can I re-order the domain name now?”

Maybe.  If your registrar hasn’t sold the domain name on auction after the RGP/ERGP expires, then at some point in time they send the domain name back to the big domain name broker in the sky.  Now you have to wait for the main domain name broker to put it back into the available pool so it can be ordered again.  This entire process can take months.  By now, you’ve already registered a new domain name similar to the one you had just to keep your online business or website available.  If you’re lucky, you’ll get that domain name back in 3-6 months and put it back to use.

“How do I prevent this?”

I suggest trying to keep the domain name with your website.  If you move  your website to a new host, transfer the domain name to them along with it.  You’ll get 1 notice when that year comes up and with automatic credit card payments or paypal payments to your hosting company, the domain should be kept current.  For our services, we offer a free domain name transfer with any 1 year or 2 year prepay account.  This is just to make it easier to get the domain name moved with your site and all under 1 system.

If you don’t want to transfer the domain name, make sure you keep the domain name on auto renew, your payment information and admin contact e-mail address up to date and current.  You should verify your domain name whois information yearly and you can do it by looking up your domain name with any of the freely available whois websites.