Make a New Year’s Resolution…Protect your Domain and Website!
Category : Uncategorized
A quick note for all the Camaro clubs across the country. Virtually all of you have domains & websites, and, like the American Camaro Association and Camaro Nationals, I am sure various members of your club do different things to spread out the workload. This may mean an officer is not be in charge of the site, and may not have all the current passwords.
If you can learn from something that the ACA overlooked, make sure your site and domain have secondary contacts, and also share passwords with other dependable key officers. The president and secretary should have a cheat-sheet with this information in case of a problem.
With the passing of both Bud Scolastico and Mike Chaney, I lost contact with the renewal of our domain name, camaronationals.org. The domain went down, and the website went down with it. I was able to get the site back up with our other domains (americancamaro.org, and camaornationsl.online), but the main name of camaornationals.org was a dead end. I am sure there is more than one person who tried to check the site and got the wrong idea when they were linked to a “Spam Warning Page” instead of our site.
I ended up having to buy or own name back at the domain auction….yes there really is an auction to buy domain names out of domain jail. I lost another 25% of my hair trying to deal with various web hosts, domain registrars, and “who is.com” employees, trying to explain that we are the camaronationals, and it was our domain to begin with. It did not matter. Without the password or the credit card number which was most recently used (I had neither), the domain name remained locked up. The site had been in turmoil for over two months.
After paying over $100 in ramsom to the domain auction police, the site is back to normal – such as it is. I am glad this did not happen in April or May during car show season! Do you and your club a favor, and set up alternative contacts with your web host, and share passwords now. Tomorrow may be too late. Have a Happy New Year!
Karl Scheffy
Co-Founder