Do You Know Where Your Domain Names Are?

[Head Boy]

In the last couple of weeks, I personally heard of 2 cases where owners of domain names realized they no longer had control of their domain names as they had expired and were in the hands of other entities. As a result, their Web sites and email accounts were disabled.

How do you avoid this? There are 2 ways to do so – take steps to properly manage your domain names yourself, or hire a professional to do so.

The Hot Iron

I think this page is worth a read just for the [basic] info on protecting your names. People still don't follow the simple rules to avoid losing their business.

[GTP Dave]

as a backup I myself have every domain on automatic renew, auto lock, and use the portfolio manager from Fabulous.
The nice feature with Fabulous is that you can have expiry notifications set to dates every day, every week, 1 month in advance, 2,3 months in advance and other variables which helps me alot. And my domains do not have to be registered with Fabulous for me to manage their data... but I do know where they are by ns, registrar and when they exp....

In most cases though, on domains that are prime, generic or big $ makers I have registered multiple years in advance...I have a few that like Netpond are good to go for the next 10 years...

and an excel spreadsheet is always available.

[glowlite]

I set up future date automated emails to myself for lots of things.

[tigermom]

It's why I try to stick with mainly one registrar with a good notifications system. And yes, an excel sheet helps too!

[ScreaM]

I do what Dave does - Excel. I don't really need to do that because I don't own more than 15 domains.