NFIB

Don't Lose Your Web Site Address
03/ 28/ 2002

An important article about re-registration of your Web site domain name appeared recently in USA TODAY ("Failure to react fast takes people out of their domain," Janet Kornblum, June 4, 2001). If you have a business or personal website with a domain name (i.e., www.yourbusiness.com or), you need to make sure that you don't let your registration lapse. Today's Workshop, by contributor Jeffrey Moses, offers valuable pointers from the article that show how you can avoid an incident that could be a tragedy for your business.

Until recently, the standard length of domain-name registration was two years. When a registration period ends, the owner has to re-register--and pay the standard fee. If the owner doesn't re-register and pay, and the ensuring 60-day grace period lapses (this period varies slightly from service to service), the domain name expires. After a five- or six-day holding period, it comes back on the market at 6:30 a.m. eastern time, when it can be purchased by anyone who registers and pays for it. This means that if you have a catchy domain name that has lapsed, you could go online one day and find that your Web site address leads to someone else's site.

Generally, the service with which a person initially registers the name will send notice via E-mail to facilitate re-registration. E-mail addresses change, however, and when owners neglect to update these changes, E-mail notices can get lost. Also, you can't assume that services will be timely about sending out a notice--or that they'll send them out at all. In other words, notice that you need to re-register can fall through the cracks.

Here are some common sense steps to ensure that your domain name remains your property:

1. Make sure that your domain-name registration includes your current E-mail address, phone number, street address and your personal name. When any of these change, immediately update your records at the site that initially registered your domain name.

2. Even with that, you'll need to pay special attention to the duration of your registration. As the time approaches, contact your service to start the re-registration process.

3. Check your site every few days or week to make sure that the name is working. If not, your registration could have expired.

4. The two-year registration period has been extended to ten years. For those who will be using the domain name indefinitely, register it for as long as possible.

5. Consider hiring a service to check your registration for you. Any of the following sites can do this for a small fee:

www.Snapnames.com
www.Domainsbot.com
www.networksolutions.com

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