Webmasters who register domains for clients, taking care of it for them so they don’t have to touch or know about it and then subsequently quit are my pet peeve for this moment. Had a hosting client, whose domain was registered by a web designer friend years ago.(the friend term is all I could come up with, although sadly, we’re certainly not besties or even acquaintances, any longer – besides friends don’t leave messes like this for people to clean up.)
Web designer friend quit the business. Domain was in her name for all notifications and for credit card details, basically everything except the registrant’s name (not really cool). Domain didn’t renew a few days ago. The web designer friend quit the business and has non-web day job and does nothing with the web. We continued to host her hosting clients (she resold through us). We get panicked call about a site being down and “not being in the search engines” today, on a Saturday afternoon.
Yep, you guessed it the domain didn’t renew and was redirecting to the registrar’s home page. We report to the client what has happened and she wants to know if we knew about it. Of course, not, it would never have expired if that was the case. Update your registration and pay for it – your site will be online within minutes. Grrr and other words.
If you don’t control your domain names, you should – make sure you know the registrar and login details, make sure you get the notification emails and make sure you have auto-renew on and a valid credit card attached to your account. It is the easiest way to avoid this headache and scenario.
This has been a public service announcement. (now go check your domains, or check with the person you entrust this to, it is important, go, okay?)
