You go to your website one day to find that it’s no longer your site…it’s now loaded with spam or ads or god forbid, an adult site! What do you do?
Well, this isn’t a situation you want to find yourself in. I had someone get in touch the other day to help clean up a site that had been hacked. The site was redirecting to a really bad page loaded with ads and spam…I didn’t stay long enough to check it out and waited for more information to come through about it.
The client couldn’t get in touch with their website guy and were desperate to get their site fixed or at least have a landing page with a maintenance message on it. As I stood by waiting for credentials (which they also didn’t have), it turned out the web guy called them back and admitted to letting the domain name expire. OOPS!
First of all, this should never EVER happen unless you mean for it to. Every domain registrar has a toggle to automatically renew it when it comes due. Use it. Here are some reasons it can be easy to forget to renew your domain:
- You had someone else take care of it for you. This is why you hired them, right? So you wouldn’t have to deal with it, but at the end of the day, it’s your business and your domain name.
- The email address for the registrant of the domain name is lost in space. Always use an email address that will be checked!
- The notice went to your spam folder. Do you ever check your junk/spam folder? You should…every.single.day.
- The email address is not being checked. Meaning an address was created just for making the domain name registration and for whatever reason, it isn’t being forwarded or it got deleted from the server or you just plain forgot it was out there and didn’t install it in your email client.
- You ignored the reminders. Maybe you thought it was a scam to get you to renew your OWN domain name! Or you meant to get to it and forgot. Or you just kept deleting all of those important reminders!
- Your credit card expired and you didn’t update it. They usually remind you of this, too!
I don’t think there’s much else here to say about why it didn’t get renewed. I’ll point again to this article I wrote about two things you absolutely need to know about your own website, even if you had someone else do all the work for you.
Your domain got hijacked, what do you do now?
Well, if you’re within 30 days of it expiring, your domain registrar MIGHT have held it for you. You can pick up the phone and call or log into your account and see if you’re able to get it back. They may charge you a fee that you will GLADLY pay for your mistake and make sure it never happens again.
If you’re out of luck there, I hate to say it, but you have no recourse in getting it back. Sometimes domain hosts will put them up for auction and sell it to the highest bidder. There are websites who follow these kinds of things so you might find it there. Is it worth paying for? I guess it depends on how much time and money you are going to lose by having to rebrand everything and purchase a new domain name. Not to mention the damage that has been done to your reputation.
The only event in which you could legally get it back is if it was a trademarked name but that could take a while and no guarantees.
You can’t get the domain name back, so what’s the next step?
Well, you’ll need to also be sure your hosting hasn’t expired as well. It’s not uncommon to purchase both at the same time. You DO have your hosting login, right? Again, auto-renew is your friend here. Be sure if you can log in that it is paid for and not going to expire. Now would be a great time to look for that renew automatically button and also put a note on your calendar at least a week before it expires to remind yourself of this.
Take a backup of your site at the very least if you haven’t done it recently and then start your search for a new-to-you domain name. Usually web hosts let you do this or you can choose a variety of other domain registrar sites and start searching.
Make it relevant and maybe even similar to the one you had. Or maybe this was a godsend because you hated your domain name and wanted to change it anyway! Always look at the bright side. Now you have the fun of adding it to your hosting account and having to change all of your URLs to the new one. That’s beyond the scope of this article, but your web host or developer can help with that.
How to make sure you never miss another renewal again!
Here are some things you can do to be sure you don’t lose your domain name to some…loser!
- Always have ‘auto-renew’ enabled on your account
- Be sure that the registrant email address on the domain is one that gets checked regularly
- Put it on your calendar as a recurring event which happens at least a week before the expiration date
- Always check your spam folder, like everyday
- Don’t ever rely on someone else to take care of this for you
- Always know the website and username and password to your web hosting and domain registrar accounts so you can access them at all times
- If you plan on keeping the domain/website for a long time, renew for many years at a time up front (sometimes you get a discount for it) – but still put it on your calendar
Learning from the misfortune of others can often save you from becoming the next statistic. Don’t let this happen to you because it’s really easy to avoid it. Even if you understand nothing about web development, you should easily be able to comprehend having access to websites that are important to your business. By the way, if you do have a website but you don’t have this information, go ask for it. Now. And there is no reason why your developer/friend/account manager should not hand this over to you…it is YOUR property so don’t accept “No” for an answer!
Need help creating a website? WRD has been building sites since the days of Front Page and Dreamweaver – over 25 years. Drop us a line to find out more!
