What's up with DIYSTOMPBOX forum ?

[Mark Hammer]

Aron Nelson's longstanding forum, evolved from this very sub-forum at the former AMPAGE site, pops up with a "domain name expired" message today.

I am accustomed to messages indicating the unavailability of the forum, knowing that everything has to undergo maintenance at some point, and that my patience will be rewarded in but a few short hours. But this is different than anything I've ever encountered before. Not sure how the domain name could expire without Aron knowing ahead of time. So is this hacking, or just "one of those bonhead things"?

Any insights?

[R.G.]

Sadly, no idea. That would be an unusual hack. Do you have aron's email address? I'm sure someone else has mailed him, but maybe we ought to make sure. P'raps he's ill or otherwise distracted. We just need to be sure he gets the domain paid up before it goes to one of the ransom-the-domain-name vultures.

[R.G.]

I had the headset on and phone in my hand to call godaddy to just pay them up for a year on the domain for aron, then I thought - it's possible that aron is changing registrars and/or providers and godaddy just got there with deactivation on the name servers first. So I didn't muddy the waters.

What do you think?

[Mark Hammer]

Not sure what to think. I know very little about this sort of thing. I don't know how to get in touch with Aron, apart from the forum, which is why I posted here.

[R.G.]

I know he's in Hawaii, so he may still be asleep.

[Mark Hammer]

Hell, he's a musician. He could be in Maine and he'd still be asleep!

[R.G.]

It's back. I think aron woke up. 8-)

[Mark Hammer]

Just came from there. Yep, it's all copasetic now. Major psychological trauma averted.

[tboy]

The same thing happened here a few months ago. GoDaddy used to give you a few days to pay up before shutting you down, but that policy appears to have changed. I suspect Aron might have become accustomed to relying on that little grace period, just as I had. Now, it seems they take over your domain immediately when the expiration date arrives, and commence spewing out that embarrassing message. And to add injury to insult, even after the fee has been paid it can still take several hours for the DNS update to propagate through the 'net, and of course your site remains unreachable until that happens.