I have a bad feeling about this

[zelthian.livejournal.com]

Judging from the placeholder pages, I have a bad feeling that our friends at NaNoWriMo forgot to renew their domain registration, and godaddy.com has taken them over. I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm right, it could be a while before the site is back up again.

I tried to see if I could grab the domains, but no go. I was going to reserve them and turn them over to the NaNoWriMo guys, but no such luck.

Registrant:
Godaddy Software

14455 N Hayden Rd
Suite 219
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: NANOWRIMO.COM
Created on: 13-Sep-05
Expires on: 26-Jun-10
Last Updated on: 13-Sep-05

Administrative Contact:
domains for sale, Godaddy Software domains4sale@godaddy.com
Godaddy Software
14455 N Hayden Rd
Suite 219
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
United States
480-505-8800 Fax -- 480-505-8844
Technical Contact:
domains for sale, Godaddy Software domains4sale@godaddy.com
Godaddy Software
14455 N Hayden Rd
Suite 219
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
United States
480-505-8800 Fax -- 480-505-8844

Domain servers in listed order:
PARK9.SECURESERVER.NET
PARK10.SECURESERVER.NET


Registry Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK

UPDATE: The same issue seems to be true for nanowrimo.org.


Registrant:
Godaddy Software

14455 N Hayden Rd
Suite 219
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: NANOWRIMO.ORG
Created on: 13-Sep-05
Expires on: 03-Nov-11
Last Updated on: 13-Sep-05

Administrative Contact:
domains for sale, Godaddy Software domains4sale@godaddy.com
Godaddy Software
14455 N Hayden Rd
Suite 219
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
United States
480-505-8800 Fax -- 480-505-8844
Technical Contact:
domains for sale, Godaddy Software domains4sale@godaddy.com
Godaddy Software
14455 N Hayden Rd
Suite 219
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
United States
480-505-8800 Fax -- 480-505-8844

Domain servers in listed order:
PARK9.SECURESERVER.NET
PARK10.SECURESERVER.NET


Registry Status: CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Registry Status: CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED
Registry Status: CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registry Status: CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED

Comments

[squirrelgirl22.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God.

I can't believe this has happened! Where are my boards!? I hope everything isn't lost!

[zelthian.livejournal.com]

I doubt the data will be lost. It's just the DNS that's been affected. In fact, as long as the web server is still running, if you had the IP address, you could probably still access the site.

[systris.livejournal.com]

um...i think the correct domain is nanowrimo.org, i went to the site today and it's still there.

[shhbabe.livejournal.com]

systris, would you check again? I hit .org too and right now, I can't see the nano page, I only see godaddy.

[systris.livejournal.com]

yep i just checked...okay, now i'm freaking out.

[zelthian.livejournal.com]

They both worked, and now neither are working for me. You probably have the DNS info cached locally. Give it a day and it'll stop working for you too. :(

[systris.livejournal.com]

it was up at work, now it isnt...crap, and i just was made an ML...

[shhbabe.livejournal.com]

All of my bookmarks are .org. I too couldn't get in just now, hitting both .org & .com. It does say they only got the pages today. I wonder what's going on.

[shhbabe.livejournal.com]

I emailed someone at NaNo, cc-ing my NaNo email address (I was an ML last year). My NaNo email address works. I'll post in this forum if I get a response.

[mongrelheart.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this has anything to do with the power shortage that affected LA? My hosting provider was down for a few hours yesterday.

[azurelunatic]

Probably not. Their host, Pair.com, is in Pennsylvania. And even so, a power failure to a top-level DNS server wouldn't cause the DNS to expire, it would just come back with something like "Cannot locate site. Are you sure it exists?" from the browser, rather than a plain old 404.

[azurelunatic]

It always makes me feel weird that GoDaddy is local.

[keolah.livejournal.com]

Ugh. No, I definitely had the right URL, seeing as all I did was click a forum name and it was gone... I do hope this crap gets sorted out ASAP...

[azurelunatic]

I called up a cached version of the page from Google, and saw that pair.com was their host. So I contacted pair.com to let them know that the domain had expired on nanowrimo.org, and there were some concerned users of the website. So if they didn't know before, they do now, and they should be getting things back in motion.

At least it's happening now, and not in October or November, right?

[zelthian.livejournal.com]

Rock on. Thank you lots! I didn't have that info cached on my box.

[azurelunatic]

Neither did I, but I Googled "nanowrimo", and fortunately Google had a cached page -- my next step was going to be archive.org. Many propz to them for including the host down at the bottom of the page, otherwise I would have been completely stumped!

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

Definitely. Has someone emailed Chris Baty?

[zelthian.livejournal.com]

The only email address I have for him is at nanowrimo.com, and with the dns issue, that wouldn't work. :(

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

He writes for a local paper there - perhaps a Google search for him? I'll look around.

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

Okay, have sent an email.

[shhbabe.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily true. I don't login in to nanowrimo.org to get mail, it redirects to my personal AOL account, and it's working. Not that I recommend flooding his box or anything!

[azurelunatic]

When the DNS expires, things will inevitably start bouncing. It happened with my mom and dad -- the ISP forgot to renew the mosquitonet.com domain, and all e-mails to that domain start bouncing.

[shhbabe.livejournal.com]

The email I sent to Chris @ nano went through (or hasn't bounced back yet) but when I forwarded it to two other people, also @ nano, bounced.

[azurelunatic]

Depending on how much you know about the inner workings of the internet, some of this may or may not be things you already know...

Really all depends on the timing. The master DNS servers have already been informed that GoDaddy.com (who are actually a highly geeky and reputable domain registration site rather than a skeevy porn site as one might think from the name) has nanowrimo.org right now, but most computers on the internet get their domain lookup from a cached copy of the domain tables (I know I'm screwing terminology up left and right here, but the principle is sound), sort of like people get a phone book every now and then rather than the phone company sending out updates as people cancel their service and get new numbers. (Only this is from hourly to daily or so, instead of yearly.)

Your e-mail takes a rambling route to get where it's going, passed between computers like they're playing hot-potato phone tag passing notes in class. Some of these computers may have the new DNS phone book; some of them may not. (These won't be personal computers; these'll be big-ass corporate computers along the internet backbone.) Depending on when you sent it and when the computers along any of the various routes the e-mail could take have updated their DNS tables, it might bounce or it might not.

Similarly, things may keep bouncing for up to a few days after Chris and his host get nanowrimo.com/org back, until the new DNS information propagates back out through all the computers.

[azurelunatic]

Pair will probably have actual contact info for him, and they'll probably let him know as soon as they know, or else as soon as it's fixed, if it's a quick thing...

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

One would hope.

[shhbabe.livejournal.com]

Were you able to get a message to Pair?

[azurelunatic]

Yep. They have a contact form at their site, and I got the confirmation mail that they'd gotten the message.

How long it'll take them to actually have a human look at it, I'm not sure, but it shouldn't take more than a few business days. And since it looks like someone's gotten an e-mail to Chris at an alternate address that's not @nanowrimo.org, he (?) should be pounding on Pair from his (?) end too.

(Gender on the web is funny. I'm guessing that Chris is a guy in this case...)

[(Anonymous)]

Yes he's a guy, and quite a cute one too. ;)

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping it's just a screwup, but .org is registered to GoDaddy too.
Scum.

I was on the site this morning and it was fine, so DNS must have just percolated through.

[painted-blind.livejournal.com]

...WOE.

[culturedgeek.livejournal.com]

Could it just be that the site is down because they're getting it ready for November?

[zelthian.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid not. Emails to the domain are starting to bounce, which indicates a more serious problem with the domain itself. Also, the registrar has changed, which is always a sign that something drastic has changed.

[culturedgeek.livejournal.com]

Hmm, i'm sure it will be back my October. If its not back by Oct. 20th, i'd start to panic.

[bugbyte.livejournal.com]

It just says the site is parked, not necessarily that they've lost the domain or something. They might be moving servers or something for all we know.

[zelthian.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid not. Emails to the domain are starting to bounce, which indicates a more serious problem with the domain itself. Also, the registrar has changed, which is always a sign that something drastic has changed.

[decemberjuliet.livejournal.com]

I saw this just a few hours ago. I hope everything gets fixed in time!

[azurelunatic]

It shouldn't be too hard for them to fix: they just have to re-register the domain name, then it'll propagate through the DNS servers, and everything will be good. Just sounds like someone forgot to pay the bill.

[pico-the-great.livejournal.com]

That is so. SO incredibly not cool.

It was there yesterday. How did this happen?

[azurelunatic]

Someone forgot to pay the phone bill, essentially. The NaNoWriMo site is still on the host's computers, but if the domain is not renewed, the address gets yanked out of the DNS servers (which are essentially a great big phone book for the internet, which match up domain names to IP addresses).

[hopeevey.livejournal.com]

I really appreciate your voice in reason in all our panic :) Thank you for explaining how all this mess works :)

[azurelunatic]

*grin* I'm a geek. It's my job.

Now, if it had been snapped up by a less reputable business, then there'd be some trouble. But GoDaddy is well-known.

[zelthian.livejournal.com]

I just hope they play nice.

[azurelunatic]

If they don't play nice, they would lose a fuckton of business, and get their name shouted from one end of the internet to the other as bad sports. They're a domain registration business, not a domain squatter. It's domain squatters who you have to worry about not playing nicely.

[gutterballjen.livejournal.com]

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

[soph.livejournal.com]

The site itself is still at http://216.92.160.242/ , although it can't access the CSS because it uses absolute links, which makes the design of the website hard to understand. But it's mostly there.

[soph.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and if you come across links which don't work, replace the "www.nanowrimo.org" bit with "216.92.160.242" and you should be able to get to it.

intro

[(Anonymous)]

hello all. my name is kymberlee but my screan name is darknedsoul and my pen name is t3g4n. now if your still with me i just wanted to say hi. this is my third year with nano. 03 i made it just past 50,000 a few days before and just stopped. 04 i wasent on the forums much because our internet was jacked up and we spent much of our time on the phone with comcast trying to fix our cable....but i made it to exactly 70,000 and felt so good about myself that i stopped right there...midsentence. this year i hope to make it to at least 73,000 but if i make it there before the 30th ill keep going. i dont like to write during the rest of the year which i think makes me doing nano even better because i didnt like to write before i found out about it and so it has expanded my horizons. Since halloween is my absolute favortie holiday and nano is the day after im in unusually good spirits on the 1st. hope to see you all there....


t3g4n