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Domains do not simply “expire.” The process involves a few steps and understanding them can be important to understanding why there is an additional fee for renewals in certain circumstances. Domain expiration can be a frustrating experience. The advent of the “redemption period” has caused a lot of sticker shock to unwary domain owners when they seek to renew an expired domain. Understanding the process of domain expiration is a crucial first step in avoiding having to pay additional fees. Understand the steps in the process described will always be the same, but the amount of time each step takes is, with one exception, determined by the individual registrar. Only your registrar can provide the specific amount of time they will start sending renewal notices or keep a domain in hold status, so it is important to know your individual registrar’s policies. Step 1: Active Status Domains within their registration dates are generally on “active” status. Some domains may be in a “lock” status as well, either by the registry or the registrar. This means the details of the domain cannot be changed without the lock status being removed. This is generally a security measure to prevent a domain from being tampered with or transferred to another registrar without the owner’s approval. Active status means a domain is live and visible, depending on the status of the server hosting the site. At any point in its active life, a domain can be renewed for an additional term of one or more years for whatever the individual registrar’s going annual rate. At some point near the end of the current registration period renewal notices will be sent. The exact time is determined by the individual registrar and could be anytime from one to six months in advance of the expiration. The notices will be sent to the contact email on the domain. This is probably the number one cause of unwanted domain expiration, inaccurate contact information. Always make sure the contact information on the domain is up to date. Be aware that making changes to contact information with a hosting company will, in virtually all cases, not update the information on the domain. The contact information on a domain must be kept current via the domain’s registrar. Step 2: On-Hold The “registrar-hold” status occurs when the domain expires or shortly after, depending on the discretion of the actual registrar. Domains in the “hold” status will cease functioning and the site they reference will appear to be “down”, even though the webserver hosting them is likely up. Some registrars will provide a short grace period of active functioning after the domain expires and before placing it on hold. When a domain is on hold status, it can be renewed for the standard fee charged by the individual registrar. This is the last point at which renewal at the registrar’s normal rates is possible. Step 3: Redemption Period This is a more recent development, one created by ICANN, the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers, ostensively to allow domain owners a “second chance” at renewing their domains and preventing their loss to other parties. Though useful, this “service” doesn’t come free. Like most elements of this timeline, the fee will vary from registrar to registrar, though it will generally be in excess of seventy dollars. Prices can rise up to $150 dollars or more at some registrars. The one difference here is the time period, which is always 30 days. The actual start date can be determined by the registrar, but once initiated, it will be 30 days, unless the customer chooses to pay the fee and redeem the domain. Step: 4: Pending Delete The final step prior to complete release of the domain for anyone to register at any registrar. Pending delete status follows the 30 day redemption period and lasts up to 5 days. There is no way to renew the domain once this status is reached, including paying the redemption fee. The only option is to wait for the domain to be purged and then re-register. There are various services from a variety of registrars that claim to offer “backorder” registration services for expiring domains, essentially attempting to pick them up as soon as they are released from the registry. Though none of them provide 100% guarantees of success, it may be worth considering if the domain is in danger of being picked up by other parties. Conclusions Always keep domain contact information up-to-date. This point cannot be overemphasized. Keeping that one rule in mind will help avoid having to deal with redemption fees for an important domain. Multi-year registrations are a double-edged sword, useful to lock down a domain for up to a decade, but also making it more likely contact information will change over that long period and requiring further vigilance on the part of the owner. The domain expiration process is not straightforward and can result in a hefty fee. If the domain is important, then it is important to keep track of it and make sure the registrar can provide notification of impending expirations. About the Author: Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for ApolloHosting.com and previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers. Established in 1999, Apollo prides itself on the highest levels of customer support. Note: These articles are provided for general interest and content purposes only, and should not be construed as “support” materials. Apollo Hosting does not guarantee the information contained within. All articles are free to reprint so long as they remain unchanged, the “About the Author” section remains, all hyperlinks are preserved, and the rel=”nofollow” tag is not added to the hyperlinks. Tags: domain, domain expiring, domain hosting, domain registration, expired domain, Web hosting
In this article we will cover the basics of what a domain name is, how they work and why you need to have at least one. I am going to try and avoid complicated computer terms and stick to explanations that should be easily understood by someone without a computer science degree. What is a Domain Name? Before we can go into what a domain name is I’m going to tell you why we need them as the answers compliment each other. The Internet is just a really big collection of connected computers (a network). For the purpose of explaining domain names you can think of the Internet a bit like the phone system and just like the phone system every computer on the Internet has it’s own phone number except an Internet phone number is called an IP addresses. This address is made up of up to 12 digits in the form 123.123.123.123, computers use these IP addresses to send information to each other over the Internet. When the Internet was first created it quickly became clear that these IP addresses were not easy to remember and another method was need to make these addresses more human friendly. The solution to this was the Domain Name System (DNS). Basically the DNS is a really really big phone book for computers. When you type a web site address into your web browser it checks the DNS for that website name and finds the IP address. Once it has the IP address it can then send a message to that computer and ask it for the web page you wanted. Ok so you know a domain name is part of a web site address but which part? Lets look at a website address so we can identify and discuss what bit of it is a domain name. http://www.itxcel.com/index.html The above address is the home page of the itXcel web site. It can be split into 3 main parts. The first part is http:// this just tells your web browser what kind of information it is going to get and how to get it. The last part is /index.html this is name of the files on the remote computer that you want your browser to get. The bit in the middle www.itxcel.com is a domain name. This is the name that your computer sends to the DNS to get back the IP address. So you know what a domain name is and that there is a phone book called the DNS to change your easy to remember domain name into an IP address that you computer can understand. The Internet phone book (DNS) is special in that everyone on the Internet needs to be able to use it. This makes the DNS very very big (100+ million addresses big). Due to the size of this phone book it needed to have a carefully organised and managed structure. Domain names themselves are split into different levels like a hierarchy. The DNS system uses this hierarchy to search the DNS for the IP address of the domain name it is trying to find. The last bit of a domain, in the previous example the com part is called the top level domain. There are a large selection of top level domains like com, net, org and info. There are also very similar endings called country level domains like uk and de. Each of the top level and country level domains are managed by a different organization, sometimes these are companies or non profit organizations and sometimes governments. In the domain business these organisations are referred to as the registries. Each registry looks after it’s own part of the domain name system. If you decide you want to use a domain name in the top level domain com, like mycompany.com you would have to have this name assigned by the registry that manages that top level domain (for .com a US company called VeriSign). The process of being assigned a domain name is called domain registration. Domain registration is more like a lease than a purchase. You are renting the second level domain (the mycompany bit) from Verisign for a specific amount of time normally between 1 and 10 years at a time. Most of the organizations that allow you to register a second level domain charge a fee for each year that you register the domain for. With almost all domain names you are also given the option to renew your registration (lease) when it is close to running out (expiring). Once you have registered a second level domain you are free to create as many third level domains (sometimes called sub domains) as you like. In our previous example the www is a sub domain of itxcel.com. Most of the registries that manage these top level domain names do not allow individuals or businesses to register domains directly with them. To register a domain you need to use a company like itXcel. We act as a registrar and send all the required information and the registration fee to the registry. Registrars are useful as they hide the differences that exist in each of the registries from the customer and provide a simple step by step process for registering a domain. A registrar also allows you to manage and track all your domains from one place rather than having to deal with a different company for each top level domain. OK so I know what a domain name is, Why do need one? Can you image what a nightmare it would be if you had an email address like myname@123.246.128.255 or a web site address http://123.246.128.255/? One of the important points about registering a domain is that once done you have an exclusive right to use that domain for as long as you keep the domain registered in your name. If you do not renew a domain at the end of it’s registration period it will again become available for registration by someone else. For this reason even if you don’t want or need a web site at the moment, it’s still a good idea to register a domain as soon as possible. Just imagine if your competition registered the domain name of your company or product. Although there is a process in place to retrieve these domain it can be long and complicated. It is definitely simpler to spend a little money up front to secure your chosen domain names. About The Author Ewan Bain is the general manager at itXcel Internet Limited - Based in the UK itXcel provide Internet services, including domain name registration and web site hosting to small to medium sized businesses and home users. To find out what domains are available and to quickly and cheaply register them visit http://www.itxcel.com now and enter your desired name in the domain search box. For further information please visit our website. Tags: domain, domain names, domain registry, ip addressing, web design, web development, websites
What is a domain name at all? A domain name is the text name corresponding to the numeric IP address of a computer server and associated website on the Internet. When you decide to have your own website you also need to decide on a domain name where you can use your website and where people can find it. But how do you find a good domain name and what do you have to be aware of when choosing a domain name? Sometimes a good domain name for your website is to choose a domain name that matches the name of your website. As an example, a website uses the business name it represents as its name and the matching domain name is “businessname.com”. This helps identifying the business on the Internet. A very well known real life example is the website of Microsoft, which can be found at Microsoft.com. The use of keywords in domain names can be important. Some search engines identify the keywords and deliver the matching website as a search results to people doing a search for this keyword. Using keywords in domain names can often have significant impact on how well a website is ranked in the search results. However - keyword stuffing in domain names is a bad thing to. People will have difficulties remembering those names and it just does not look as professional. If you are serious about your domain name avoid domain names like “search-engine-success-guaranteed.com” or something like that. You will get the idea. How long or short should a domain name be? The shorter a domain name the easier it is to remember. A short domain name also looks more professional (some exceptions may apply though). The perfect domain name has 14 characters or less. However - it is not always possible to follow this rule. If you need to work with more than 14 characters, 22 characters should be your upper limit. Do not go with longer domain names to avoid problems. Should a domain name include hyphens? Hyphens in general are not a bad thing but you might loose visitors to the same domain name without hyphens. Using a hyphenated domain name makes verbal advertising more difficult as the speaker has to make sure that people understand the hyphen (dash) in the domain name. Still - it will be a significant disadvantage using a hyphenated domain name for advertising. For search engine optimization a hyphen does not really matter though and the domain name or better - website will show up at the same position as a non-hyphenated domain name. The domain name extension or TLD (Top Level Domain) plays an important role, too. “.com” domain names will always be the best choice to go with. This does not mean that your website will not be successful if you decide to go with a different TLD like “.us” or “.info”. About the Author Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Christoph Puetz lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. One of the websites he maintains can be found at Hosting Tutorials. Tags: domain, domain name registration, TLD, website
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