In the day and age where most companies and people blame others when they forget to renew a domain name (as is what appears to have possibly happened in Morehead, Kentucky), a Canadian ski club appears to have let its domain name expire and didn’t blame anyone else for the error. Unfortunately for Whaleback Nordic Ski Club, their domain name, Whaleback.ca, was acquired by a company selling a sex toy.
As of November 29, 2009, the domain name was registered to a company called “Stag Lodge,” and the domain name was set to expire on December 1, 2009. On January 6, 2010, the domain name was registered to a different company. In an article found in The Western Star, the site’s webmaster, Jack Lamond, doesn’t go pointing fingers at others.
“Once you lose your Internet (domain) name, it belongs to someone else. That’s why you pay a domain name fee,” Lamond said.
It’s a shame the person in charge of domain registrations did not renew the domain name. As I always advise, ensure your credit cards on file are up to date, your domain names are set to auto-renew, and you check your emails from your registrar.
It appears that Whaleback Nordic Ski Club isn’t the only organization whose website was impacted by not renewing the domain name. A look at a cached page on the former Whaleback.ca website shows a link to a Stag Lodge Outfitters (StagLodge.ca), and that website now also has adult content.
That particular domain name was registered to the same contact as the Whaleback.ca website as well. Let’s hope he wasn’t responsible for any childrens’ websites or other important domain names.
When a .ca domain expires, you still have thirty days to renew before it’s deleted and goes to drop. During that 30 days the domain doesn’t resolve, so it’s amazing people miss the fact that their website isn’t working, but it happens. As for autorenew, at Godaddy I just had three names autorenew at the regular price of close to $11 each, instead I would normally have a coupon and get them for under $8 each. It would be nice if they could autorenew for you with the best coupon code available, but since they don’t I’ve taken my names off cause I watch them close anyway. This happened over a weekend when other things were going on, I’d have been able to renew them anyway cause they stay in your account for a while after expiration.
@domain report: For that reason I always transfer any domain acquired through Godaddy auctions to Moniker, then set autorenew on when it gets there. That way the cost is always $8 and there’s no messing around with Godaddy’s coupon codes or their ridiculous checkout gauntlet and 60-day lock-in policy.
When a domain has a sorted past, how do you get Google to remove the links from there history or is there any hope for the domain in the future? This was a GeoState.com that a porn site used to attract traffic.
I almost back ordered that whaleback domain for the mere fact it was a website. I wouldn’t have put porn on it though…