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After many years of using the domain name whdnmra.org, the Division has had to change the domain to whdnmra.info.
I apologize for the inconvenience this is causing.
When we changed web server hosts a little over a year ago, we still had a year left on our domain name lease.* I didn't transfer it at that point, believing the domain would remain active as long as there was time left on the lease.
It turned out that the lease on the domain name is tied to the hosting account, and when when the hosting expired, the domain name was suspended.
This happened Thursday, the 12th, making the site inaccessible. The site was still intact, as it is hosted elsewhere, but, like a house with no address, no one could find it. I was notified that the name wasn't working on Saturday, the 14th.
As I attempted to resolve it, I found the invoice for our current hosting and paid it via Paypal. However, instead of paying the invoice immediately like my personal bank does (to the same company), our bank sent an eCheck, which takes 3-5 days to arrive. I sent payment on Saturday, the 14th. The due date was Monday, the 16th.
On Sunday, I asked our former host for information to transfer the domain name to another registrar. Monday, I was told they would not do that unless I brought the old (unused) hosting plan up to date ($95), renewed the domain at the undiscounted rate ($150), or created a "master domain account" with their registrar and they could "see" if they could "push" the domain to that account. In all three cases, after 31 days, I could then transfer the registration to a new company. The expense of the first two and the uncertainty of the third convinced me that registering a new name was likely the best way to go.
Tuesday, I contacted our current webhost, and asked if they could tack a domain name onto our current account. Sebastian emailed back within an hour, saying that I had to pay the outstanding hosting invoice first.
I was quite upset by this time, as I was looking at the site being down for at least a week. We have a show coming - we can't have an AWOL website...!
I answered him back, saying that I'd paid it, explained about the eChack, and offered to send a copy of the verification email Paypal had sent me. I didn't have much hope of him being able to help me.
Within a few minutes, I got an email with login information for the new domain name and a fresh invoice for the domain registration. On a whim, I tried the new address, still not very optimistic.
It worked. Immediately. If I could have hugged Sebastian, I would have.
I sent payment for the new domain right away.
Now our domain registration and the web hosting will expire at the same time. I don't anticipate having to move our site in the near future - Downtown Host has taken excellent care of us - so having the domain tied to the hosting shouldn't pose a problem.
I know it's going to be a hassle letting people know the new address. My thinking was that most people who are seriously impacted by this change would be easily contacted, and links from National and Regional can be quickly updated. Search engines will take a bit longer, but really (and I have the visitor logs to back me up) - most of the people who visited us from search engines were looking for something TOTALLY different.
Will we ever get the .org name back? Possibly, but it'll be a while. The old lease expires in October and it has to be re-released "into the wild". No one else is likely to snatch it up; it's far too specific. Again, I apologize. I'm working to make sure everything on the site works as it should. The folks at National and Regional have been contacted and asked to update their site links. Please be aware that it will take a couple of days for email forwarding to begin working again.A new sitemap has been submitted to Google and their links (and our search terms) should be updating soon. * Despite a common misconception, no one on the Internet "owns" their domain name. They lease the right to use it, through various third parties, from ICANN. It's possible to create a 100-year contract to use a name, but it's outrageously expensive and only the largest corporations bother with it.
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