Oops, My Domain Expired!

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What an exciting day! Been writing up a storm here; sadly, for the last week or so I've been so uninspired however ideas are popping into my head once again.

My morning "duties" include catching up on several sites, Triberr, a nifty platform for sharing blogs is one of my stops. Some of my tribe members (I'm on two) post their latest blogs early in the morning and I like to catch them as soon as possible. It's enjoyable to read some of them (I read as many as I can) and comment as well.

This morning was different. Triberr wasn't there. Google informed me that was having trouble accessing. So, during the morning, I tried a few more times; same issue.


Then, I recieved a most amusing email from the good New Jersey folks (my home state!) at Triberr. Here's part one:

Note: Never saw what they think I'm seeing about Virgin America and the like! 














My eyes darted further down the screen...

MY fault! No, wait...it's not (whew)! The true reason was found in the link "Read What Happened." Long story short: Triberr's domain name expired!

This actually happened to me once with a domain name that was supposed to be passed along to me for a board I'm on after that board member left (I do maintain that website). Imagine my surprise when I received a phone call saying "Where is our website"? 

The solution? I contacted the former member, put the domain in my name, and set up automatic reminders.

I do have that set for all the domains that I own. Can't afford to have any of my websites suddenly disappear! 

Now, back to Triberr. I admire the way they handled this situation. They came forward, admitted they made a mistake, made light of the situation, and quickly informed the users that they are fixing the issue! We all got a nice chuckle out of it. Their open communications were completely in context with their normal way of doing business with their users, plus, they retained their cheekiness and hip style throughout. Here's the closing statement: 

"We're really sorry for the inconvenience and confusion. We could promise it will never happen again, but frankly, we wouldn't have believed it if someone told us this was going to happen in the first place."

Why am I even writing about this? Two reasons: 

• Triberr is a great tool for bloggers and I've gotten to know some nice people because of my involvement there. They are human and they make mistakes too. Their errors do not get brushed under the rug in effort of hoping that no one will notice. An example to learn from!

• Secondly, it can hurt your business to be off the grid without a website for even a minute, let alone hours or even days until you can get that domain name paid for and reestablished. Don't let it lapse. 

The morale of the story is: Go into your host's account right now and make sure you're set up to receive notifications from them!

Sometimes it's nice to have "systems" in place to help us with our busy lives. The Pointer Sisters sang about automation (sort of) back in the 70's (see below). If you want to stop by please visit our website, or our accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ you'll have to do that manually!