Since I last talked about web page design, I thought it was timely to forward Blake Carver's post from LISNews reminding people to check their domain name expiration date.

Unfortunately the people over at Ocean County Library were unaware their domain name expired and a squatter jumped all over it causing a big mess for patrons and for the librarians. It can be tricky trying to find out who snapped up the name because many squatters do not always purchase sites using their legitimate name and identification. The library is trying, through its attorney and a domain name broker service, to purchase the domain name back again.

Don't rely on renewal notices or bills. Christine Matteo of Ocean County Library says she never received any. Blake, who also runs LISHost, mentioned he has seen this sort of thing happen "at least six times to LISHosted sites." I have been a part of two non-profit groups who recently lost their domain name within the last year.

Snatching up expired domain names isn't hard, or else there wouldn't be people doing it. For example Network Solutions has a service allowing people to buy already registered domain names through their "Premium Resale Domain" service and place backorders on a name, making that person first in line to get the name should it ever become available. They aren't the only ones doing this either, many other companies like GoDaddy.com offers domain name appraisals in addition to buying lists of soon to expire names.

I have a couple of guesses as to why people forget to re-register their domain names. Many people by their name for a long period of time, 1-5 years. A couple years down the line they forget when they bought their name and figure that a renewal notice will most like show up when it is due. Some places issue renewal notices, many do not. To complicate matters, nonprofits often have high volunteer turnover rate. The volunteer who bought the domain name and set up the website probably is long gone. The turnover problem can also happen among small businesses and institutions. It is probably a good idea to check your domain name and mark it on your calendar. So what if it expires April 12, 2011. Just mark it every year on your calendar on that date, and again in January so you remember to put it on the next year's calendar. A more techie way to do it is use something like Google Calendar and set it as automatic event reminder.