Your web address is expiring / domain name management
Once upon a time you picked a domain name. Your company’s web address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The part that follows the www. You or someone helping you “bought” or registered that domain name for you. This may have taken place some years ago. The person who helped you may no longer be working for you or you may have lost the registration info.
To complicate things further, you may be getting letters in the mail or email with the alarming message that your domain name is expiring. They are advising you to renew your registration or lose your web address. The letters look official. Should you send them a check? Are they really the ones who manage your domain name?
What to do?
Click on this link and do a Who Is search to get the info you need. At the very top of the page, under the DomainTools logo is a text box where you should type in your web address. Don’t include the www. Then click on the little right-facing arrow next to the text box. The page that comes up will tell you everything you need to know. Well, almost everything.
In the box of Registry Data, you will see the ICANN Registrar. It will say Register.com or GoDaddy.com or the name of any one of thousands of registrars or resellers who manage domain names. If you’re lucky it will also show you enough information to clear up who actually owns your domain name and when it is set to expire. It’s probably not registered with the scammers who have been sending you letters or email.
Unfortunately, the WhoIs record often shows that you are not the registered owner of your own domain name. It may have been registered “for” you by your administrative assistant who no longer works for you, or your web designer or your IT consultant or your web hosting company. What you may find out is that you can’t renew it or move your website to another hosting company or make any change at all.
Hopefully you do recognize the name of the person that is the designated contact or administrator of your domain registration if it’s not in your name. Ask this person to give you the username and password so you can log in to the account and change all of the contact info to your own. Change the username and password and then write them down.
If you don’t recognize the person or company who registered your domain name or you can’t contact them or they are uncooperative, you will need to contact the domain registrar to find out their process for getting ownership of your domain name changed over to you. This can be painful and time consuming. It’s easier to get divorced.
But it has to be done and you should do it today. Do NOT WAIT until your domain name expires because there is a VERY REAL chance that when the domain registration expires, someone will steal your domain name right out from under you and then try to sell it back to you for lots of money.
The image below shows the kind of information you will find in the Who Is record:
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In this case, the Registrant (or domain owner) is Domain Discreet. At the top is the address and contact info for them. They are also the administrative and technical contact. The domain Registrar is Register.com. The domain was registered in September 2006 and expires in September 2008. The DNS servers tell you who the web hosting company is. In this case, it is mochahost.com. If we were unable to contact the people at Domain Discreet to turn over the account access to us, we would have to work with Register.com.
