Im not exaggerating here – but I have had more than 5 customer this WEEK contact me saying their online world was down and they didnt know why.
We host 100’s of websites and have done for many years, so we have sharpened our tools over the years and have many monitors in place to inform us if there are issues on our end. With problem websites (ie websites that are HUGE or websites that consume a lot of resources) we have bespoke monitoring solutions and other clever scripts and fixes in place to ensure that if they do go down we are made aware and the websites will try and recover themselves automatically.
So, when I was contacted multiple times this week about some client websites being inaccessible I knew that there was nothing wrong with any of our servers, and the fact they were having email AND website issues – It almost always leads to the same core problem.
Expired Domain Name.
It is SUCH an easy issue to avoid, I dont think i’ve ever encountered a domain registrar that doesn’t have a domain name “auto renew” option, and every domain registrar I have used sends email reminders 90, 60, 30 (etc) days before the domain name expires.
However, one of the clients that reached out to me DID have auto-renew enabled, so what happened?
They had recently moved business banks and the card they had added to take care of their renewals and stuff had been cancelled – meaning it couldn’t be charged for the renewal, so the domain registration lapsed.
There are also certain domain extensions that from time to time introduce extra processes and steps to ensure registrant details are correct and in the past, failure to action the emails they send would lead to the domain being suspended until the domain contact info/registrant info was checked and updated.
The tl;dr here is;
- Make sure you know where your domain is registered
- DO NOT ignore renewal reminders
- Periodically check your payment method(s) linked to your account are correct and active
- Consider adding a backup method, such as an additonal card or PayPal
And if all else fails, ask a digital agency like dijitul to manage the domain name for you. It will cost you a little bit more than if you were managing it yourself but you can rest assured that your domain name will never expire and will always remain active and your website accessible.
Contact dijitul today to discuss how we can help take the stress out of running your online business.
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