Domain Transfers Can Be Hell
May 30, 2008
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The other day I made the decision to move a domain from one registrar (about $17/year) to GoDaddy (for a fair bit less), and started the procedure to get things rolling.
After I had gotten everything squared away with GoDaddy, they told me that I would need to login to my account on the original registrar and confirm that I actually wanted to move the domain. I did so, and found nowhere on their site details on how to confirm moving a domain away from them to a new registrar. *Lots* of information on how to move one to them, but not the opposite. Sent them an email about it, and finally got a response today with a link to confirm the transfer.
After that, I confirmed that everything appeared to be running smoothly, and that the domain was responding correctly, which it was.
When I got home tonight, though, I found that GoDaddy had changed the DNS records, and the domain is now pointing to a GoDaddy landing page full of ads. Oh, crap.
Then I realized that I’d make a mistake that Vic had talked about earlier - *NEVER* have the contact email for your account be the same as the domain in which it’s registered. When they changed the DNS records, I suddenly lost access to my email for that domain. And I happen to store my account number in that inbox. Not the brightest thing to do, I know, but…
So now, the domain is dead until at least Monday when I get back to work and login to my account from there. Because to have them email me the login, I’d have to have access to the email account that they changed the DNS records for.
Fun, huh?
I think that when I get things straightened out, I’m going to be moving the mail to Google Apps for Domains, and changing the contact email on *all* my domains to my standard Gmail address. Because this has turned in to a bigger pain than I could have imagined.
I’m just glad it was on a personal domain. If it had been on one that I made money on, I’d be seriously P.O.’d.
Moral of the story is, change the contact email on your domains to something that’s not related to the domain, and if something goes very wrong, at least you’ll be able to receive mail from the registrar if necessary.
Update: Well, I logged in to the GoDaddy account and changed the IP forwarding rules, and the DNS has propogated properly, so the site is back up and running.
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May 31st, 2008 at 3:29 am
Hey, exactly right on.
We just don’t believe ‘it’ will ever happen to us, so we still put the domain e-mail and get caught out.
Thanks for the heads up on this.
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May 31st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Informative. I’ve never had this issue and never even thought about it…I think now though, I’ll double check my contact info.
Thanks!
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June 1st, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Well look on the bright side, you wont do that again! Sometimes the best way to learn things like this is by messing up
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June 1st, 2008 at 6:01 pm
@Rhys: You’re absolutely right. I thought it’d never happen to me either. Till I sat down on Friday night and went, “Uh oh.”
Thanks very much for your comment.
June 1st, 2008 at 6:02 pm
@Dennis: Please do so. It’s really not a good feeling when you realize it’s happened.
June 1st, 2008 at 6:03 pm
@Kevin: You got that right. Best way to learn things is by messing them up….how do you think I learned to fix computers?
Heh. This wasn’t a lesson I really wanted.
Thank you very much for your comment, also.
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Been there, done that. Yes, it can be a pain transferring domains, but with good reason. I’d hate for it to be easy for less scrupulous webmasters to transfer some of my better domains. The more hoops to jump through, the more secure it is.
Top Rated’s last blog post..Looking For Top Rated Point And Shoot Digital Cameras?
June 20th, 2008 at 1:04 am
I guess that is the music I will need to face soon. I intend to change both my domain and hosting company!
August 3rd, 2008 at 11:24 am
Best way to learn things is by messing them up