My custom domain (the dot com in the url that makes any website legit-sounding) expired last May 4th. The force wasn't with me, it didn't auto-renew as it should be. Worse, all of a sudden, all our debit cards didn't work in the payment process, too. Thank God we have a Bobbie Salazar in the family! She saved my brand from its supposed extinction. You see, I am Royal Domesticity. I don't know if I'll ever be ready without it next to my name. Feels like Iron Man to RDJ if you know what I mean.
But what happened, really?
Methinks my GoDaddy account was hacked. What is GoDaddy? According to its website, "GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and incorporated in Delaware. As of April 2020, GoDaddy has approximately 18.5 million customers and over 7,000 employees worldwide." That's where I bought my custom domain. Without a custom domain, my blog would have been www.royaldomesticity.blogspot.com.
For my non-blogger readers who are not understanding anything yet, it's like buying my own condo unit in a high-rise building. GoDaddy is the high-rise building with lots of units (custom domains) for sale. I bought one that makes www.royaldomesticity.com. Without buying a unit from GoDaddy, it's like I'm only renting from Google (the blogspot dot com). And just like ABS-CBN, if I don't renew my registration with GoDaddy, my blog site would be a painful sight of bad gateway or error domain or even a blank space.
It was set in auto-renew. I was confident that there will be no problems. But when I received an email that said my domain expired and that I only have 12 days to settle it or else it'd be cancelled, I was frantic. Exaggerated, yes. People in the interwebs can be mean. They can buy the domain and not use it at all. They'd just buy it so they can sell it to you, the very desperate previous owner, at a costly price.
Good thing I was able to talk to a GoDaddy customer service representative named Martin. He sounded a bit bossy at first and made me feel like a dumb child for not knowing to do (hahaha) but he amazingly found ways to help me. Since my auto-renewal didn't go through, I had to manually purchase the custom domain. But it seems like someone has hostaged it. An e-mail address that starts with T and a mobile number that ends in 5293. No idea with how it happened but CS Martin was able to transfer it back to my shopping cart. I had to call them back again though 'cause it miraculously disappeared from my cart when I entered a promo code. But CS Sarah was very patient to do it again for me and even walked me through the whole process of reinstating this website.
Prior to this, I had a belief that the domain will no longer be mine so I resorted to getting a Domain Broker Service worth Php3,429. Commission and domain fee weren't included in that amount yet! I almost cried in front of my husband, who also didn't know what to do with since these things are very alien to him. I guess it was a blessing in disguise that our cards weren't accepted.
So... the lesson here? Do not procrastinate. Most importantly, if your blog is the headquarters of your social media channels and that you are actually earning from it, prioritize it. This is more of me talking to myself.
PS - If I have grammar errors, I'd correct it later ha. Wrote this in between home-service massage and preparing pancit canton for dinner eh. Just had to share it as soon as I can. Ktnxbye.
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