What People Are Saying
Reviews from Google, LinkedIn, and emails are used with permission:
Ive been working with Emily Journey & Associates for about six years now. I originally came across their services while looking for someone to train my staff and I to manage our website independently. Emily worked with us and was able to get us successfully trained to the point that we were easily able to manage the website on our own . As the business grew, the time we were able to personally dedicate to management of the website became limited. Emily and her team were there to take over and manage all aspects of the website at that point. Theyve done so ever since and we couldnt be more satisfied with the results. I always trust that the website is in very good hands. The results have been consistent. Emily and her staff are accessible, knowledgeable, friendly and highly responsive. Year after year, theyve continued to exceed our expectations. I highly recommend their services.Brian Harmych, MDHarmych Plastic Surgery
I kept track of the conversions resulting from my 30 City SEO campaign and thought you would be interested in the results to date. In the past 10 weeks, there have been 48 orders from states and cities we have not served in the past. Orders have come from 14 of the 30 cities I targeted with SEO. That is a 450% return on our investment in your SEO Training. Fingers crossed for an even more successful Christmas!Blanche FraserGluteny Bakery
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When a domain name is registered, the registrant acquires the right to use, renew, restore, or transfer the domain name. When the registrant no longer has those rights or someone else registers the domain name, the prior registrant may consider it a “lost domain name.”
To see if a domain name is registered and to find its registrant, you can perform a WHOIS search at .
ICANN does not have the ability or authority to transfer or return a domain name to anyone. ICANN’s authority is purely contractual and is limited to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement , the Registry Agreements , and ICANN’s Consensus Policies.
Whois Public Domain Info
WHOIS is a database that stores public information on a domains registered users in a way that can be easily read. It basically tells you who is responsible for a domain. Many online registrars will allow you to access and search the WHOIS databases. I use the Godaddy lookup out of habit but any of them should work just fine.
WHOIS will also give you the registrant name of the individual who registered the domain. Now youll be able to know if it was an old web designer, a business partner, or even yourself who set it up. Youll also find the date of creation and expiration date. With this information you can hopefully contact the person who registered it and have them transfer the domain to you. And we all live happily ever after!
If you need to recover a domain account where you lost the password, the WHOIS info will often give the registrant email address which will help you in recovering a password and login from the domain registrar.
Transferring is slightly complicated but I created a video on how to easily transfer domain names that you can find HERE.
Note: Keep in mind that some domain owners pay for privacy to hide the public WHOIS information and provide only proxy info. In that case, youll be out of luck and may just need to wait for the domain to expire so you can register it yourself
For a rundown on best practices when setting up a website, check out my blog post on Website Ownership Fundamentals and feel free to ask any questions you may have below.
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How To Rescue Your Website From The Clutches Of A Bad Web Designer Or Bad Web Host
From time to time, more frequently than one would think likely, I get emails from my visitors asking me if it is possible tomove a website from an errant web designer or a bad web host without the cooperation of that person or company. This mayhappen because the web developer or web host has refused to relinquish control of the site when asked to. For example, theymay not have given the owner his/her login and password so that the latter can access the site to update it themselves.This article attempts to address the problem.
The Context Of The Question
The people who ask me this question usually have slightly different circumstances. The most common scenario is thatthey have hired a web designer to create and maintain a website for them, and that designer has ignored their requests forthe site to be updated. And when they ask the designer to return the website to them, they meet a wall of silence. Anothercommon scenario is where their web host has gone bad in some way , and they want to move their site elsewhere.
Before you take the steps written here, consider the following:
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Are you sure there is no misunderstanding between you and your designer as to the scope of his/her duties? Re-read your contractwith that person. Does it specify that he/she update your website or does the fee you paid only include the initial design work?Maintenance work usually involves a monthly fee, over and above the monthly web hosting fees. If you only made a one-time payment, chances are that it only covers the initial creation of the site.
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Do not use this procedure as a means of solving your dispute with your web designers. That is, if you have withheld payment fromthem for some reason, and they’re ignoring you because you’ve not paid up, this article will not solve your problem. Your designerswill probably just haul you to court for breach of contract .
Basically, if you have a legal dispute with your designers, get help from a lawyer, not from some random website on theInternet, even one with a name like “thesitewizard.com”.
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Is It Free To Transfer A Domain
No, although the fee and structure varies. Some registrars, like GoDaddy, charge a flat fee for the transfer itself. All registrars will charge you a registration fee when your domain is up for renewal. Some will bundle both costs together. You also have the option to register a domain name for free.
Point Your Domain To Your New Web Host
Once your new web hosting account is set up, you’ll need to make your domain name redirect to that new location. Please readmy article How to Point aDomain Name to Your Website for the steps to take to accomplish this. You will need to be able to log into your domainregistrar’s account to do this.
This is the key step that wrests your website out from under your old web designer’s or web host’s control. Onceyou do this, your old site will no longer be accessible to you using a web browser. So if you want a copy of yourold website’s pages, make sure you save them before you take this step.
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S To Take To Regain Control Of Your Website
To reiterate, in case you skipped the aboveexplanationon the importance of having control of your domain name, make sure you have the account user name and passwordof your domain name registrar before you do the following steps. There’s no point carrying out any of thesteps below if you cannot log into your domain registrar. If you don’t even know what a domain name registrar is, or you don’t knowwhich registrar you used to get a domain name,chances are strong that you won’t know your user name and password either. In such a case, you won’t be able to do use the stepsbelow to get your site back.
Check If Your Domain Name Was Really Hijacked
If you open your domain name in a browser and it does not open your website anymore, it is natural to think that somebody stole it. This may not be the case, though. Before you panic, you should double-check what may have happened. If you have any doubts, you can always contact your registrar company and check whether your website does not open due to some trivial reason and not due to a domain theft.
Make sure your domain did not expire
When a domain name expires, its name servers are changed automatically by the registrar company. As a result, the domain no longer points to the account where it is hosted and no longer opens the website it used to. Instead, it opens a page from the registrars system and it is up to the registrar if they will display ads or some other content. In most cases, you will see a note that the domain has expired, but sometimes such a note may not be that visible.
All it will take to get your website back online will be to renew your domain through the registrar company . Once the original DNS records propagate, everything will be back to normal.
Check if your website got hacked, not the domain
If you use any outdated themes or plugins, or you have not updated your website for a while, there is a chance that the site can get hacked. Sometimes hacked websites are left intact and malicious content is added to them, other times their content is replaced entirely.
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How Do You Buy An Expired Domain Name
- The Registry is the name of the organisation that is responsible for maintaining the record of domain names for a given top-level domain like .com or .org.
- The Registrar is an organisation that is authorised to register domain names.
- The Reseller is a person of company that sells domain names on behalf of a registrar.
- The Registrant is a person or company that purchases and owns a domain name. Technically, no domain name is actually owned, but leased. More on that in just a minute.
Domain Name Theft Is On The Rise
In the past several weeks, I have witnessed several domain names that I can confirm were, in fact, stolen from their owners. These valuable domain names were stolen, and as of writing this post, none of them have been recovered and returned to their owners:
- Perl.com stolen around Jan 27 2021
- Neurologist.com stolen around Jan 27 2021
- Chip.com stolen around Jan 27, 2021
- Patterns.com stolen around December 8, 2020
- Piracy.com stolen around December 8, 2020
All of these domain names were stolen by a domain name thief. They typically gained access to the domain name registrar account involved and then transferred the domain names to another domain name registrar. In some cases, they will change the ownership record so that it shows that the domain name is under privacy, and the contact details are hidden. Then, once they transfer the domain name to another domain name registrar, they will un-hide the domain name ownership details and put the old owner details in place of the private details. That way it looks like they original owner still owns the domain name, but the domain name is in the thiefs account. In all of the cases listed above, the domain name thief has tried to sell the domain names for about 10 percent of what they are actually worth. Theyll list them on websites such as Afternic.com and Sedo.com.
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How To Recover A Hijacked Domain
Related
Once you register a business domain, you might feel the pride of ownership. But that domain isnt technically yours to own. You can only register it, and that registration can be stolen. Domain hijacking doesnt get a lot of attention, but it poses a real threat. It causes a lot of frustration, too, because even if you never let your Internet domain name registrations expire it can be surprisingly easy to lose control of a domain — and surprisingly hard and costly to get that control back.
Do I Have To Pay To Renew My One Free Domain
All free domains registered as of March 5, 2015 will be free for the first year of service. After one year of service, the domain will renew for $20. We’ll charge the credit card connected to your site.
If you registered a free domain prior to March 5, 2015, your domain will continue to renew for free every year that your site remains active.
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Can I Get A Refund For A Domain
You can cancel your domain and receive a refund within five days of registration. We don’t offer refunds after this five-day grace period.
Your primary domain can’t be removed. If the domain you want to remove is your primary domain, first set a different primary domain.
To cancel your domain and receive a refund:
To learn more about refunds, visit Refund policies.
Can I Connect My Squarespace Domain To Another Provider
Yes, this is possible. However, if you’re moving your site to a different provider, we recommend transferring your domain to them instead.
If you want to keep your domain registered with Squarespace and direct it to a third-party site, you can forward it or point it. We recommend reviewing the two options before setting up your records.
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What Happens If My Renewal Fails
If we can’t charge the credit card on file for your site, your domain will remain active and past-due for 15 days. We’ll make additional attempts to charge your card every five days after the initial failed charge. After the third attempt, 15 days after the payment was due, the domain will no longer resolve to your site. We highly recommend that you keep an active, valid credit card on file to ensure uninterrupted service.
After 15 days, you’ll have a 30-day grace period in which you can reactivate your domain from your Domains panel. After 30 days , the domain will be released back to the registrar.
How Backorders Improve Your Chances To Secure An Expired Domain
Post redemption, can I finally register the domain? Not quite.
Theres a five-day status called pend delete, which is a temporary hold before the domain name is released back to the public. The original owner can no longer renew, but no one else can register it, either. Once this period is over, potential buyers who have purchased a backorder will have the opportunity to secure the domain.
If more than one company holds a backorder, the expired domain will go to whichever companys backorder service was lucky enough to catch the domain when it was released.
Think along the lines of a popular concert with tickets going on sale at 10 a.m. You try to buy tickets and are awarded a place in line based on how quickly you clicked your mouse. You were competing against other buyers for that spot. The backorder service does this automatically for you and tries to grab the expired domain.
If another companys backorder service secured the domain, you wont receive the domain.
Coincidentally, if more than one person owns a backorder for the same domain at the same company, then an auction amongst the potential buyers will likely take place.
If no one backordered the domain anywhere, you could register the domain through standard procedure on a website such as GoDaddy. At this point, its no different than registering an already-available domain.
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