Notes From The Cave

My PocketPCHow2.com domain where I host my weblog on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile stuff expired on October 21 and I didn’t realize it until today. Apparently when I last registered the site I must have renewed it for several years. The problem is that when I registered the site I used an email address that I no longer monitor, so I never saw the notice that the domain was expiring.

Most disappointing is that my hosting provider didn’t alert me nor does their domain management system even indicate that the domain name is due for renewal even though I am using one of their preferred registars.

Fortunately, I was able to remember the password that I used for that old email address and that the email account is even still available. One of the first things that I did was change the email address to one that I actively monitored. (Thus the risk of having so many email addresses.) I think the issue is that when you register the site they tell you to use an email address that is NOT associated with the domain that you are registering. That makes sense because if the domain expires (like it did) I wouldn’t be able to get to the email server via DNS because the domain would redirect somewhere else. So, I used a secondary email address that at the time I was actually monitoring. However, since that was so long ago I didn’t realize that and so I stopped monitoring that account thinking I didn’t have any important email going to it.

Anyway, I have now renewed the account for another year at the ridculously high price that Network Solutions required because there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to transfer an expired domain to a new (and cheaper) registrar. Hopefully soon the renewal will take affect and my Pocket PC weblog will be back on the air. I have created a to do to transfer the domain to a cheaper registrar in the future.