Your company’s Domain name is a key part of your Corporate branding, and warrants appropriate protection, and administration.
Each year at least one of our customers will accidentally let their Domain name expire. Here is some background and ways to avoid this happening to you.
Once a Domain registration expires you no longer own the Domain and all associated DNS entries, Web Sites, and e-mail will cease to function. There is a brief grace period wherein you are given the option to renew an expired Domain for up to 2 weeks after expiration, but after that period it is available for anyone else to register.
Every year, all accredited domain registrars are required by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), to remind domain registrants to review their contact details for their Domain name(s), and make any changes necessary to ensure accuracy.
If you have not been contacted by your domain registrar then your contact details may be incorrect, allowing for the possibility that you will miss the domain renewal and expiry warning emails. It may be as simple as the staff member who registered your domain all those years ago now longer works for your company, or you have had changes to your email addresses or company structure.
There are simple tools available on the web to lookup all registered domains and check your contact details. It takes only a few minutes and could save your company days of downtime if your domain name expires.
Domain name information can be checked using registrar WHOIS utilities such as www.whois.com.au
If you have any questions regarding domains please contact Troy Brady for more information.