Your domain name is like the deed to your house–it’s extremely important. Your domain name should be under your name (not mine, not the registrar’s not your cousin’s) and you should keep an eye on the expiration date. If your domain expires and you don’t notice or don’t do anything about it, your website will go down, your email won’t work, and you will most likely lose your domain. No, really. It happens all too frequently. Once it’s gone, you might be able to get it back by buying it from the people who bought it. Good luck. Bring lots of cash.

Here are just a few simple tips to hold onto your domain name.

  • Registrar: use a big-name registrar. I like GoDaddy because they give you a fair price and loads of options.
  • Auto-renew: set up an automated system, if the registrar offers it, to renew (pay) for your domain each time it expires.
  • Many years: renew your domain name, if it’s one you do want to hold onto, for many years. Go crazy, buy it for 10 years. $9 x 10 years = $90. That’s a whole lot less than the time you’ll have to spend figuring out why your site went down, you missed email, and oh, sorry, I had to change my domain name.
  • Contact email: use an email address in the admin section of the registrar that you actually check. If they send a reminder that your domain is expiring and you don’t get it, it’s not a big help. If you’re worried about spam, use their “privacy” options.

I won’t even get into some of the horror stories I’ve been involved in, but here’s one from today. If you understand the logic, lucky you.

NOTE: It seems like you allowed your domain anexamplewebsite.com to get expired for a brief moment with the Losing Registrar. In order to punish the Registrant for allowing the domain to expire, the Losing Registrar always temporarily deducts one year of domain registration. If you are absolutely sure you never let we-actx.org expire at any time since 2007-03-15, then you may be entitled to an additional year of registration once the transfer completes. If you did recently pay the Losing Registrar, you’ll need to wait until after 2007-05-01 to be sure not to lose one year of service you’ve paid for. OR CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

It continues later on in the document with this:

DO NOT CONTINUE if you have renewed your domain within the past two months. If you are sure you renewed your domain BEFORE IT EXPIRED, then you may continue without losing a year of registration. Most Registrars will immediately DECLINE a transfer attempt on an expired domain. If the domain gets deleted, it will be forced into REDEMPTION status which will force the site to be down for at least 90 days.

If you decide to continue and end up losing a year of domain registration, you’ll need to contact support to explain your situation. To avoid this warning, you may try again in -352 days once the renewal grace ends, or else continue at your own risk.

Keep it simple, just keep your domain renewed.  If you have other horror stories to share or registrars to avoid, feel free to comment below.