FAQs

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Domains

Categories: Domains, Registration
Domain names are registered in yearly increments (up to a maximum of 10 years). Most people will commonly renew their domains every year. A lot can happen in a year (let alone 10 years); contact email addresses may change, your bank may issue you a new Credit/Debit Card number, your phone number may have changed, you may have moved, etc. When such changes occur you may not have received your invoices for your annual renewal (we bill 30-60 days before expiration), or your Credit/Debit Card on file for auto-pay may have expired. In such cases we will make every effort to contact you at your last known email address, phone number, and physical address, but unless we successfully get a hold of you to update your payment information your domain name may not be renewed on time. It happens sometimes. Besides renewing your domain for multiple years at a time, or just remembering to keep us updated to any changes in your contact information or billing information, your domain will enter a 30-day Grace Period after it expires. During this Grace Period your domain can be renewed for it’s normal cost. It’s all good…let out a big sigh of relief. However, after the 30-day Grace Period your domain is held by our Registrar in a Redemption Period. Registrars can hold an expired domain for up to a maximum of one year after expiration in this Redemption Period. During this time we can “redeem” your domain, but at whatever increased cost the Registrar is asking for the domain. In many cases your domain can be redeemed for around $150 (which includes a 1 year renewal), but if your domain is a high-profile domain the cost to redeem may be $5000 or more. In such cases, you have three options:
  1. You can pay the Redemption fee. If your domain is that good and that important, then it’s probably worth it.
  2. We can back-order your domain and when it is released from the Redemption Period by the Registrar it will be automatically re-registered for you. A back-ordered domain may take anywhere from 45 days to a year before it becomes re-registered (assuming no one else pays the Redemption fee at Auction before then for your domain).
  3. We can order an alternate domain for you that is similar to your original domain.

DNS

Category: DNS

Non-caching DNS (Domain Name Services) Servers will see your domain changes immediately. Caching DNS Servers may take anywhere from a few minutes to as long as 24-72 hours to propagate your domain changes.

Category: DNS

If changes have been made to your Domain Name, such as changing your DNS (Domain Name Service) Servers, or making any changes to your domain zone records in DNS, then DNS or Domain Propagation must occur. Domain Propagation may take anywhere from a few minutes to as long as 24-72 hours.

When a visitor tries to visit your website their computer contacts the DNS Servers belonging to their ISP (Internet Service Provider). These DNS Servers then query the registration database to find out who the DNS authority is for your website. Then they visit our DNS servers to find out what the IP Address is for your domain name, and from there your visitor can view your website.

The problem with this is that in order to speed up the rate at which their customers can view the internet, some Internet Server Providers tend to cache non-authoritative DNS records. This means that they make a copy of the master records and read from them locally instead of looking them up on the Internet each time one of their customers wants to view a website. This can create the appearance of speeding up web surfing by a few milliseconds, by reducing the return time it takes for a web browser to request a domain lookup and get an answer, and also reducing the amount of overall traffic on their service.

The downside to caching and why it takes so long for your website to be visible to everyone is that each ISP that caches DNS records only updates them every few days. There is unfortunately no standard for how this is handled, and although the practice is widely discouraged, this time can be set anywhere from a few hours to several days by some ISPs. The slow updating of the DNS server cache is called Domain Propagation, as changes to your domain name’s DNS information are being propagated across all DNS servers on the internet. Once this is complete everyone can visit your new website. Being that the cache time is different for all DNS servers, as mentioned above, it can often take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours for DNS changes to be totally complete.

Please note that all non-caching DNS Servers will see the changes to your domain’s DNS immediately. Google’s DNS Servers and OpenDNS, and most Public DNS Servers are non-caching.

Registration

Categories: Domains, Registration

Domain names are registered in yearly increments (up to a maximum of 10 years). Most people will commonly renew their domains every year. A lot can happen in a year (let alone 10 years); contact email addresses may change, your bank may issue you a new Credit/Debit Card number, your phone number may have changed, you may have moved, etc. When such changes occur you may not have received your invoices for your annual renewal (we bill 30-60 days before expiration), or your Credit/Debit Card on file for auto-pay may have expired. In such cases we will make every effort to contact you at your last known email address, phone number, and physical address, but unless we successfully get a hold of you to update your payment information your domain name may not be renewed on time.

It happens sometimes. Besides renewing your domain for multiple years at a time, or just remembering to keep us updated to any changes in your contact information or billing information, your domain will enter a 30-day Grace Period after it expires. During this Grace Period your domain can be renewed for it’s normal cost. It’s all good…let out a big sigh of relief.

However, after the 30-day Grace Period your domain is held by our Registrar in a Redemption Period. Registrars can hold an expired domain for up to a maximum of one year after expiration in this Redemption Period. During this time we can “redeem” your domain, but at whatever increased cost the Registrar is asking for the domain. In many cases your domain can be redeemed for around $150 (which includes a 1 year renewal), but if your domain is a high-profile domain the cost to redeem may be $5000 or more.

In such cases, you have three options:

  1. You can pay the Redemption fee. If your domain is that good and that important, then it’s probably worth it.
  2. We can back-order your domain and when it is released from the Redemption Period by the Registrar it will be automatically re-registered for you. A back-ordered domain may take anywhere from 45 days to a year before it becomes re-registered (assuming no one else pays the Redemption fee at Auction before then for your domain).
  3. We can order an alternate domain for you that is similar to your original domain.