Archive for the ‘domains’ Category

How to Reactivate an Expired Domain Name with NameCheap

Thursday, January 25th, 2024

NameCheap has been around for ages and they are a solid, tier 1 registrar.

So it’s no surprise that they give you a 30 day grace period to renew your domain name after its expiration (some other registrars grab expired domain names and either charges a lot of money to renew and send them to their in-house auction market).

However, there can be some confusion when renewing an expired domain name with NameCheap.

I believe for the first 10 days or so, you can just add the expired domain name to your cart and RENEW.

For domain names that have expired from 11 to 30 days ago, you need to REACTIVATE them.

It used to be that reactivation would allow to proceed to renewals but NameCheap changed the process.

Now, reactivation process renews the domain name.

Steps to reactivate and renew your expired domain name

  • Step # 1 – log into your NameCheap account (BTW, I highly recommend you turn on the Two Factor Authentication (2FA) feature to secure your account)
  • Step # 2 – Click on the EXPIRING/EXPIRED link from the left navigation bar

  • Step # 3 – add the expired domain name to the shopping cart
  • Step # 4 – In the shopping cart, the section just under the domain name is called a “PROCESS ORDER TYPE” and it should say REACTIVATION. Click on Confirm to place the order.

Note that if you placed your expired domain name in the shopping cart during first 10 days into the expiration, the process order type will say RENEW. If you try to process the shopping cart when your domain name is not 11+ days into expiration, the order will fail. In that case, you need to first delete the expired domain name from the shopping cart, then re-add it.

Hope this helps.

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How to Determine if a Domain Name is Blacklisted

Wednesday, January 25th, 2023

When buying an expired or dropped domain name to either launch a new website or to 301 REDIRECT to an existing website, you first need to determine if a domain name is blacklisted.

Blacklisted domains or domain names that have been tagged as being the source of spam email/content means these sites will never rank with search engines and could negatively impact your existing site.

Therefore, you SHOULD check the name against online databases that track known spam sites:

For a real-time check to see if a site is malicious or not, you can use one of the following online tools:

Unfortunately, there is no single website that tracks 100% of spam and malicious sites so you should check multiple database sources.

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Domain Transfer from GoDaddy to PorkBun

Thursday, November 3rd, 2022

Table of Contents

Unlock domain names at GoDaddy

  • Log into your GoDaddy account
  • If two factor authentication is required, enter the 2FA code

Unlocking domain names

There are two ways you can unlock your domain names:

From DOMAIN PORTFOLIO screen:

  • Click on the domain name
  • Click on the LOCK button and choose the unlock option

From the MAIN screen:

  • Click on the domain name
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click DOMAIN LOCK on the “Locking prevent unauthorized changes, including transfer to another registrar”

Get the authentication (EPP) code from GoDaddy

  • From the MAIN screen
    • Scroll down to the bottom of the screen
    • Click on the link “Transfer domain away from GoDaddy”
    • From the next screen (Domain Transfer Out), click CONTINUE WITH TRANSFER button
    • In the next screen, copy the authorization code

Submit Transfer Request with PorkBun

  • Click on TRANFER TO PORKBUN screen
  • Enter the domain name and Auth Code and hit SUBMIT button
  • It will take about 4-7 business days for the domain transfer to complete

submit domains to transfer

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Best Domain Registrars

Thursday, November 3rd, 2022

There are literally thousands of domain registrars all vying for business.

Having bought, transferred and sold domain names for over 20+ years, I can tell you that there some shady domain registrars that you want to avoid.

Also, with the explosion of gTLD flavors (.life, .baby, etc.), it was expected that prices for “older” gTLDs (.com, .net, .org) would go down but that proved to be false.

“Best” is defined as:

  • Should be ICANN-accredited for gTLDs and ccTLDs
  • Reputable, Financially Stable
  • Low prices (initial and renewal)

Best registrars as of November 2022

  • Porkbun
    • Pros: low initial price, renewal price
    • Cons: relatively new
    • Reviews
      • https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Porkbun-domain-registrar-reliable
  • Namecheap
    • Pros: rock solid; have been around for a long time
    • Cons: renewal prices are too high
  • Dynadot
    • Pros: solid web interface
    • Cons: prices are going up

I also use GoDaddy but their renewal prices are way too expensive.

Although I like Namecheap, they have been steadily increasing their prices too so I will probably move bulk of my domain names to Porkbun

Reference Links

  • List of ICANN Accredited Registrars
  • https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registries/registries-en
  • Registry operators: https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_registrar

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