A New Year's Resolution That's Easy to Keep
I'd like to suggest a New Year's resolution to you:
Don't "lose" your domain name.
What am I talking about? Well, every day my colleagues at Tucows deal with business owners who are in a panic because they "lost" their all-important domain names. And by "lost" this (upon further investigation) usually means the business owners forgot to renew their domain name on time.
Now, I'm sympathetic to a point, however the responsibility for renewing a domain name ultimately rests with the owner of the domain name and no one else.
Sometimes, I'm proud to say, we can help reinstate the "lost" domain name. And sometimes we simply can't. Which, for some businesses, is a disaster. Yet it's a disaster that could have been so easily avoided.
Here's how:
Take 30 seconds, RIGHT NOW, to find out when your domain name is going to expire. (Do a WHOIS query at whois.tucows.com, then check to see what expiration/renewal date is listed.) Make note of this date.
Now, take another 30 seconds to write a reminder to yourself to renew the domain name a few weeks before it expires. Go ahead, I'll wait while you do this. Use Outlook or whatever calendaring system you use. Just make sure you set a reminder!
Finally, when you get your reminder to renew your domain name, RENEW your darn domain name! In most cases this takes less than two minutes, and you can do it online via the company your registered the domain name with.
See, that wasn't too difficult, was it? Especially compared to how difficult "losing" your domain name would be...
Happy New Year!
