What to do when hosting company goes bust!

Help!

[dp140982]

My domain and email has been down for over 2 weeks now.

I beleive my hosting company has gone bust, although in a complicated story it looks though they may have simply re-named themselves to a new company. I think they did this because they sold a lot of 'host for life' deals very cheaply and are trying to get out of the deal. Anyway i am investigating this further.

Basically I am losing a lot of business with my site being down, and also all my email. So i want to move my domain to another company - however im not sure how i go about retriving the domain and anything else i need to do.

Its a .co.uk domain so who do i need to contact or any information greatly appreciated!

[hayluke]

If you have no luck with the host contact Nominet directly (www.nic.uk) who should be able to help you out.

As long as you are the named registrant for the name (and you can prove that you are who you say you are) then you can transfer your name(s) onto another host. I would recomend giving them a call and I'm sure they can help you out..

[DaveN]

dp140982,

It's taking about 12 days in total from the request getting to nominet and them releasing it to the new ISP.

I would hit Nominet from both sides you request the release and get a Nominet Member to request the release also.

We Just got one released for a customer due to the web designer not releasing the isp tag, but it does take a little while.

DaveN

[dp140982]

Thanks guys.

I shall be in contact with nic shortly.

I shall also be continuing my investigations into the company, i am now positive they are the same firm reincarnated so i will be taking issue with trading standards. I also live not to far from their offices so will be paying a visit.

[rogerd]

>>I also live not to far from their offices<<

Hmmm, maybe I should add this to my list of criteria when evaluating hosting firms. Being able to threaten them in person might be a big advantage, if they haven't actually skipped town! ;)

[stlouislouis]

Maybe some more good points to list are what factors would
eliminate a hosting company from consideration.

Things like offering too low a price to be long term viable,
unlimited space and bandwidth, etc. What else?

I'm sure some things are "nice to have but not essential",
so I'm not talking about the entire universe of hosting
options; I'm wondering what factors would for sure eliminate
a host from consideration.

P.S. Anyone who knows where the hosts offering unlimited
space get their unlimited capacity hard drives, please let
us all know!