Domain Expired
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Hi there,
A website I built for my school has vanished from the DoDaddy server and the domain name I bought from WordPress appears to be ‘unavailable’ to repurchase all because my school changed their credit card without telling me and the auto renewal didn’t kick in last December.
I will probably have to recreate the website from scratch but I need the domain name back. Does anyone know how I can retrieve it or what might have happened to it? Could someone have already snapped it up so soon after it expired?
Any help is much appreciated as I can’t start rebuilding the website until I get the domain name back.
Many thanks,
-Keith
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I see you also posted about this earlier. I’ve now closed that thread and tagged this one for Staff assistance.
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Hi there,
First, your site should be fine, as long as you didn’t let your hosting account with GoDaddy expire as well. You cannot access it at the moment because there is no domain connected to the site, but the site’s files should still be on GoDaddy’s servers. So once you reconnect a domain to that site, hopefully you’ll be able to access it all again. Please contact GoDaddy support to make sure of this, and for help in reconnecting a domain.
But your domain is unfortunately beyond the point where we can recover it – our registrar is already in the process of deleting the domain so it can be released again. This means you might be able to register it again in a few days, provided someone else doesn’t buy it before you are able to. As your site is with GoDaddy, I recommend you try buying it directly with them, though you’re welcome to again try and register it with us as well and mapping it to GoDaddy as you had before.
I suggest you check every day, starting today, if the domain has been released yet, so you can buy it back as soon as possible once it is.
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Hi Kokkieh,
Thanks so much for the advice. I’ve been on to GoDaddy already and they told me my site is gone from their servers because I was meant to renew is at the beginning of December. They said it was up to me to back it up manually – personally, I found that strange that they didn’t have a back up themselves seeing as it was hosted on their servers. Then they tried to sell me their web building software!
Is there any way I can check if the domain name has been rebought by someone else? It expired the same day as the GoDaddy hosting at the beginning of December I had a window of about a month to rebuy it but I was unaware of the credit card change.
Maybe you know how long it takes for the domain to be deleted by WordPress? I’ll monitor it every day just in case.
Many thanks for helping me to get to the bottom of this.
Regards,
-Keith
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It can vary a bit from registrar to registrar, but here is the domain expiration process for domains registered through WordPressdotcom
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I found that strange that they didn’t have a back up themselves seeing as it was hosted on their servers
This varies from host to host and from plan to plan. Some hosts, like Pressable, provide limited backups on all plans. Some provide no backups at all, and some only provide it if you specifically choose a plan that includes it. It’s always safest to invest in a backup plugin like VaultPress, though, or to at least manually backing up your site by periodically doing a SQL dump.
All might not be lost, though. I searched for your site using the WaybackMachine, and they appear to have a snapshot of your site from October last year, so at the very least you might be able to copy some of your content from there to use when rebuilding.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161009152827/http://stpatricksdrogheda.com/
Maybe you know how long it takes for the domain to be deleted by WordPress?
The domain was removed from our system in January already. After that it went through redemption with our registrar, and is now in the final, pendingDelete phase. That phase usually lasts about a week, and your domain entered that phase on the 24th, so it should be available within the next few days.
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Hi again Kokkieh,
You’re so patient for explaining all that to me – yes I was able to access the WaybackMachine to remind myself of the layout and design and I have all the content saved on my computer from when I designed the website.
My last question is regarding the pending Delete phase – when the domain is released will I be able to find it openly for sale on GoDaddy, WordPress etc or doest it appear on auction sites first? My school is very small with limited funds for IT things like this and I can see the Board of Management asking me to change the domain name rather than pay an inflated rate for their old one.
Any final advice would be much appreciated.
Regards,
-Keith
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When the domain is released it will be available again for anyone to buy at any registrar, so if you’re quick you should be able to get it back at the normal price.
The one big exception is if someone has the domain on back order somewhere. In that case, the registrar where they have it on back order will try to register it the exact moment it is released. Should that happen, there’s not much you’ll be able to do and the best option would be to pick a different domain in that case.
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Hey guys,
Just wanted to touch base and say thank you very much for all your help in sorting out my domain problem. I’m glad to say the web domain came back on the market and I was able to snap it up at the normal price.
You have been great help and very patient. I on the other hand have learned a very important lesson: never presume the auto renewal function will kick in – especially when it’s tied to someone else’s credit card :)
Many thanks guys!
-Keith
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That is excellent news. Thanks for letting me know you were able to get it back.
I’m glad I could help :)
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Awesomeness! Now the process begins on rebuilding… but before all that I need to figure out what interface to use to rebuild it. The last time the domain was registered with WordPress so I used to WordPress interface but I rebought it through GoDaddy because that’s where the hosting is.
Not sure if I can still use the Word Press interface for building? Need to do some serious googling before I begin this again :(
Feel free to ignore me – you’ve done your good deed in getting me this far guys :p
Many thanks!
-Keith
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You can use WordPress with GoDaddy as well. In that case you’ll be using the self-hosted version of WordPress, called WordPress.org. It also has a WP-Admin dashboard like here, and you can install a plugin called Jetpack to connect the site to your WordPress.com account so you can manage it from your account here.
You can find the support forums and full documentation for WordPress.org here:
https://wordpress.org/support/
I also recommend you look at a few tutorial sites like wpbeginner.com, as well as the many Youtube videos that’s available for self-hosted WordPress. GoDaddy support should be able to help you with how to install it in your account with them.
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