I'm looking for a domain for my new project. I found one that would be great... there's a "his Domain has expired.
Please contact your provider to renew." page hanging... but when I do whois, I see this:
Expiration Date:15-Jun-2007
What should I think about it?
When a domain expires, the registry will automatically renew it on behalf of the registrar. The registrar then has 45 days to cancel the renewal and get its money back. So if the source of your whois is the registry rather than the registrar, it will normally show the auto-renew date. But if you then go to the registrar and do a whois, it will show the date based upon when the domain owner/registrant renewed.
Hope that makes sense. btw - that applies to .com, .org, and .net at least. Not sure about other TLDs.
what should I do to make sure I'll be able to buy it? can I sleep peacefully if I backorder it with godaddy? (that's where I keep my domains).
After the domain status has been at REDEMPTION_PERIOD for at least 30 days, the registry can get ready to drop it. They then set the status to PENDING_DELETE. It will have that status for 5 days. At some point on the 6th day, they release the domain.
Various circumstances can cause the whole thing to drag out. One reason is if rights to the domain are in dispute. Another is if the domain is used by a name server. By that I mean if there are active domains registered with NS1.EXAMPLE.COM as one of their name servers, and EXAMPLE.COM expired, the registrar and registry would continue to allow the domain to correctly resolve. There is no limit on how long they should continue to let the expired domain remain active.
Some domains with ownership issues are held up for more than a year. And I have seen domains remain active for 5 or more months past expiration because they were used by name servers.
The bottom line is to be patient and watch the status (as reported by the whois) of the domain.
Either its 15-Jun-2006 either registrar is messing something.
If its 15-Jun-2006 then the name will go to redemtion period for 45 days and then into redemption delete period,usualy for 4-6 days
Expiration Date:15-Jun-2007 and the name has already expired?
Either its 15-Jun-2006 either registrar is messing something.If its 15-Jun-2006 then the name will go to redemtion period for 45 days and then into redemption delete period,usualy for 4-6 days
The whois from the registrar will not reflect this auto-renewal. This is because the registrar is interested in showing the status of the domain with the current domain owner.
If the registrant (domain owner) doesn't renew the domain, and the registrar doesn't auction it to someone else, they have 45 days after the auto-renew to cancel the auto-renew and get their own money back from the registry.
For an example, find a .com (.org or .net will work too) domain that expired 5 or 10 days ago. Do a whois at the registrar (networksolutions, tucows, etc.). Look at the expiration date. Some registrars have a link to "see underlying registry data". Follow that (or just do a whois at www.internic.net) and compare the expiration dates.
btw - I just noticed that GoDaddy apparently doesn't show their own expiration date anymore. But the networksolutions whois will show the registrar expiration date for the GoDaddy domains.
