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Keeping Track of Domain Expirations?
phutureboy asks: "Between providing hosting for several dozen web sites and consulting for a number of clients who run their own servers, lately I find myself overwhelmed with keeping track of domain expirations. Although the domains which I've personally registered are consolidated under one Register.com account, there are many others spread among multiple registrars, to which I may or may not have administrative access. It would take days or weeks of frustration to audit them all and make sure my clients' contact information is up to date. Does anyone have any tips for dealing with this mess?"
http://www.gnu.org/software/gcal/gcal.html
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
I have abour 200 domains that I administer for my company. Most of them are in 1 DomainDirect account, but there are a bunch spread out over 5 or 6 different registries.
The best solution that I've come up with so far is to have all of the domain registrars use the same email address (in this case admin@mydomain.com) which I use ONLY for contact with the registrars, and I put it under a very heavy spamfilter rating.
Then the only problem is that I have to remember to check that email account once a week or so.
Jared
1. Open Evolution
2. Open Konsole
3. In the Konsole window type "whois
4. Set Alarm in Evolution for 1 month prior to above domains expiration date. Then cut and paste who is output into the notes section of the alarm.
5. Repeat steps 3 through 5 for all domains.
6. On the second day, find something useful to do with your time and quit being such a putz.
http://www.domainreminder.org/index.php
You could always transfer all the domains to the same registrar. It can get expensive, but some companies give you bulk discounts.
This space intentionally left blank.
Domain Reminder is currently monitoring 42 domain names.
I wonder how they can possibly handle the load of all those domains? I am in awe.
hosting for several dozen web sites.... It would take days or weeks of frustration to audit them all
Why? What's the problem? Even if you only type with two fingers, I can't imagine this taking more than 4 hours per year.
On a side note, here is some information on how to actually track domain names.
The company I work for has the same problem. Thousands of domains do get hard to manage. I've been tasked to write a tool that will help with requesting domains (internally, so that they can be purchased, etc) and to have the tool help manage them by keeping all the information updated in the database. It would send out expiry emails, have a workflow for requests, etc.
I'm going to be using php and mysql to code it.
I wish I could release it as GPL, but it's too specific to the company I work for and the lawyers won't let me.
perhaps move them all to a registrar that specializes in bulk domains (7.95 domains and transfers too) !
not an ad ! my former employer used them.
Simply give all of your customers my email address, and I will look after them.
:)
No more problems for you
Register the domains so that they all expire at the same time. You can make May domain month.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
First step is to transfer them all to a lower priced registrar: Reason for this is easy, registrars are now a commodity and the lowest price wins. I use godaddy for everything and have found their customer service to be pretty good.
I register everything in my customers names except for the technical contact and then I turn on the AutoRenew option for each one. Godaddy then sends me a few notices as a reminder before actually renewing them. I never worry about losing them.
I actually foot the bill for the auto renew as a bonus for hosting with me and customers like that, it's a good sales point to let the customer know once you have reeled them in. The little things mean a lot.
Hope this all helps.
Hunt around and find a registrar offering a sweet deal on 10 years of registration and forget about it. Usually you can get them down to $10-$15 per year and maybe cheaper if you transfer a bunch of domains over. I converted all my domains to the 10 year plan when tucows ran their last special and now I don't have to go crazy worrying about it anymore.
In 10 years, the Internet and world will probably be a very different place. Get the monkey off your back.
Ok, here ya go, these guys are running the special this month.. REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN FOR 10 YEARS for $79.95
http://www.koredomains.com/
Make the problem go away!
1) Go to Staples (or OfficeMax)
2) Buy 12 post-it notes (you can get more if you're on a high-end budget. But get a val-u-pak, then.) Also buy a pencil (not a pen -very important!)
3) If you don't have a wall or refrigerator door, get one.
4) For each month, take a post-it note, write the month's name on top. For each month-labeled post-it, write down the *name of company; *domain in question; *registrar used; *logins, passwords etc.; *contact information (which you update when it changes); *day the domain expires; *any other useful info (you can create a code for this so it's easier to store in the small space.)
5) Apply post-its in annual order to the wall or refrigerator door. If you store sensitive data such as the domain password for IBM, you can place the note *inside* the freezer box of the refrigerator. VERY secure.
Hope that helps!
.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Just make a small database with all of the domains in them and the info about them. Run reports once a month of upcoming closers. Should be simple. Just a couple of hours of data input and your done.
Melbourne IT have a managed service called Corporate Domain Management whicb performs an initial audit and consolidation of domain names and then simplifies ongoing management tasks through dedicated account management, online access to your portfolio etc. They have a growing list of corporate clients and listed in this years annual report IAG, St George, Smorgon Steel amongst others. There is a product description on on www.melbourneit.com.au
You can right a shell script to parse the whois based on a list of domains and have it email you if the date is close.
The english language is in beta. It's evolving but has not yet reached a level of usability.
You don't have to renew the registrations right before they expire, you know. Just make a big list and renew all of them at the same time, once per year.
The only thing you can really do is to consolidate them all to one registrar.
But then to prevent getting into the situation again, you should impose some "rules" - which is what I did:
1. All new domains must be registerd with the "approved" registrar, by you. You will not deal with any domains that are not.
2. Any domains you are taking over must transfer to the approved registrar before you will commit to managing them.
3. Any transfer away from the approved registrar automatically relieves you of any responsibility for managing the domain after that.
If clients complain, explain that the work involved in juggling multiple registrars is too much. If they insist, then negotiate a higher management rate for their domain to cover your costs.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Why not just write a shell (or Perl) script to run a whois on each of your clients' domains, grep'ing for "xpires on:" (or whatever) and stripping out all non-date info.
Next, have it write out all domains with a month or less before expiration to a file. If the file is not empty, have it email the results to the appropriate people (I'd make it you -- and you can notify your clients if they maintain control over the domains).
Finally, run your script as a weekly cron job.
If you're extra-serious about this (and want to keep DNS records current with your last-known contact information), create a relational DB (I'd suggest something free, like Postgres or MySQL) with contact information for your clients. Depending on what information your registrar makes publicly available, you can use this weekly cron job to compare what you have on file with what the registrar has on file and alert you to any changes.
This way, your clients can keep control over their DNS records, and you can audit them to let yor clients know that there is a problem. Hell, you'd be a step ahead of Microsoft, who just lets their domains expire until some Good Samaritan bails them out.
Good luck!-Turkey
When you work it out, I suggest you tell Microsoft so they can use this for keeping track of when to renew their Hotmail domain names...
Grab.
Spend the days or weeks needed to audit them all. Alternately, contact your customers that have registered their own domains and remind them that it's their responsibility to maintain the registration information unless they give you access. We don't let any that we have control over expire, but I get calls from customers who have let their own domains lapse from time to time. Nothing I can do about that.
Wow, thanks for all the helpful suggestions. I have read what everyone said, and here is what I decided to do:
. gz
1. I wrote a quick batch/commandline PHP program which will retrieve and parse the whois information for a list of domains on a daily basis, and mail an expiration report to me. It's not perfect but it works. The script can be downloaded here: http://www.axis80.com/domain_watcher_20031209.tar
2. When each client's domain comes up for renewal, I'll check their contact information and make any changes necessary to bring it up to date, unless it's a NetSol domain, in which case I'll just throw my hands up in frustration.
Anyway, thanks again for all the good ideas. Hope others find the PHP script useful.
OmegaSphere... they have really good pricing when you have lots of domains. They don't really have any info on their site, but I contacted support about their 'reseller program' and they got me setup with an account where I can see all the domains in one place and auto-renew and that kind of thing. Support has been great as well, so I can't complain...
I think their URL is www.omegasphere.net though I could be mistaken.
I'm looking at godaddy's registrar offerings with great interest as one of the features they offer (and which I've not seen elsewhere) is domain synchronization.
.... a trial registration with a single throwaway domain seems to be working out well, though)
Move your domains over, hit the button, and they all now expire on the same day. One post-it note on the fridge, one payment.
(I said "looking at", not "using" since naturally I'm reserved about leaping into something just because the marketing looks good
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.