evilrouters.net

It worked! I have a new domain name now…

At least a month or so ago, I came across an article on Steve’s UnixWiz site and thought that was a pretty good domain name. He does consulting work and I thought the domain was kinda catchy. In addition to working at the College, I do some work on the side for a few companies and wanted something a little more flashy than just “gaddis.org”. Since I’m a big Linux freak and have been since ‘97 or so, the first one I whois’d was linuxwiz.net. Taken, of course.

But wait — I noticed it was actual expired. So why was it still taken then? Over the next little bit, I found out that Go Daddy has a few “phases” that its domains go through after they expire. According to the rep I talked to, there’s a 30-day period where the owner can get the domain back no problemo, then a 45-day “REDEMPTIONPERIOD” where the owner can get it back (at a hefty cost). Failing that, the domain goes into a “PENDINGDELETE” phase for five days during which no action can be taken on it. After that five-day period, the domain is released and made available to the public again.

I was on vacation all last week, which was the time I figured the domain would become available. I just figured that I’d miss it and somebody else would probably snatch it up. I happened to think about it yesterday and checked whois again. whois said that it had been placed into “PENDINGDELETE” on March 15th. Yesterday was the 20th, so that was the five days. The domain still wasn’t available, however.

Go Daddy has a “service” called backordering, whereby they will monitor domains and attempt to snatch one up for you if or when it becomes available. I called Go Daddy back last night and asked the rep why the domain hadn’t been released since the five-day period was up and if he knew when it would be. Of course, he didn’t. He then brought up the backordering service like a good sales guy and after debating it for a minute I told him “Okay, do it. Put it on the card you have on file.” and about ten seconds later I had an e-mail from them confirming my “order”.

I checked the whois database a few times this morning at work but nothing had changed. I had pretty much forgotten about checking it anymore when I got an e-mail at 3.19pm from support@godaddy.com with a subject of “DomainAlert: LINUXWIZ.NET Successfully Captured”. w00t! Got it!

So now I have this “cool” new domain name (I think I’m just tired of this one after three years or so) to play with. I immediately set up DNS for it and it’s already working and functional just a few hours later. Since all e-mail for gaddis.org comes into Postfix on a Debian GNU/Linux box at my house anyways, it was trivial to modify its configuration to also accept mail for linuxwiz.net. So, less than six hours after I acquired the domain, it has a working website and e-mail setup.

I probably won’t do anything special with the domain and just move the blog over to it (www.linuxwiz.net is just a virtual host pointing to the same directory as www.gaddis.org anyways) over the next few days. That reminds me, I still haven’t scanned all my vacation pictures. Oh well, someday…