The date of 20th January 2011 is one the management team at Halfords, the national car and cycle retailer, will not forget in a hurry.  Failure to keep an eye on its own domain name resulted in two embarrassing blunders that day.

When the company failed to pay its domain renewal in time its website, www.halfords.com, went offline.  Its domain registration company redirected the site to keyword advertising, resulting in displaying advertising and links to competitor websites.

All this was down to a simple administrative error that is becoming all too common in businesses, both big and small.  The story’s moral is to understand domain dominance.

Basically, when you register a domain name you effectively lease the right to use it from the registration company you have registered it with.   This means the domain must be renewed whenever the renewal period falls due, usually every 12 months. If you forget to renew in time, your registration company has the right to take the domain back and, potentially, sell it to someone else.

Our advice to protect your domain is to:

• check your domain name(s) expiry date via our WHOIS tool
• note the date(s), and make a calendar reminder at least two weeks prior to that
• ensure the contact details recorded are up to date, especially the email address
• record the details of your domain registration company in case you need to contact them
• consider extending your domain renewal period (in some cases this can be up to 10 years)
• transfer your domain registration to a reliable domain management service such as AGUK

AGUK’s Domain Management Service
Our service includes automatic renewal, thus ensuring your domain(s) can never expire.  This robust protection gives you domain dominance with security, and peace of mind.