internet, website question

[Royal Dragon]

So last year, when the hurricanes hit, my site went down. After a time the hosts main site came back up (Paramountwebhost I think), and I kept e-mialing them about my site. I never got a response, even when I offred to pay them.

Now, if I go to my old URL I get this

www.royaldragonusa.net

I tried e-mailing THEM, and I still get no response.

Does anyone know how to get my URL back?

[Yao Sing]

Did you register that domain name? Did you fail to renew it?

Domain Name: ROYALDRAGONUSA.NET
Registrar: DOMAIN ROUGE INC
Whois Server: whois.domainrouge.com
Referral URL: http://www.domainrouge.com
Name Server: DNS1.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS2.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS3.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS4.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS5.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Updated Date: 21-nov-2006
Creation Date: 22-aug-2006
Expiration Date: 22-aug-2007

Looks like someone grabbed the name on 8/22/06. Looks like you'll have to make them an offer to get it back unless they don't renew it next year.

Your site is probably still hosted at Paramountwebhost but you lost the domain name to someone else. I see royaldragonusa.com is available. Register that one and point it to your website.

[Yao Sing]

Oops, looks like PARAMOUNTWEBHOST.NET is down and out. Hope you have a backup copy of your website.

Find another host and register royaldragonusa.com.

[Royal Dragon]

Paramountweb host does not return my e-mials either.

When the site went down, the name was still mine. The registration was comming due soon, but I was never able to do it because they were not responding to me.

Thier phone number is down, and i really don't know how to re register the name without the hosts help.

[Yao Sing]

Well unfortunately it's gone now as you can see. Go to Network Solutions (or GoDaddy, whatever) and register the royaldragonusa.com and leave it parked there until you find a new host for your website.

I suggest you set it up for auto-renewal with a credit card so you don't lose it in the future.

[Royal Dragon]

I guess we posted at the same time.

I have copies of the pages, BUT I want to redo the site anyway.

Paramount never contacted me to say they were out of buisness or anything. just one day there was no access to my site, and no response from them.

I noticed they got it in 06? The site went down about a year prior (Whenever the hurricanes hit New orleans). I was due to re register the domain a few months after, and never knew how to do it.

[Yao Sing]

Best to register with Network Solutions or another big name registrar that will be around for awhile. You can host the site there or anywhere.

[Royal Dragon]

Yes, thanks, That is a good idea.

I was poking aorund that site you linked to above. Minimum bid on my old URL is $200.00

Isn't that sick?

[David Jamieson]

rd-

registering a domain is easy and you can get pretty cheap hosting services that are reliable.

to register a domain, visit a registrar, it's really a 1,2,3 step process to get your domain registered.

start with www.register.com

if you like, they will also provide cheap cheap hosting seervices for you. If you want to add a bulliten board with a backend then the prices ramp up accordingly.

if you want a decent cheap hosting service, here's a couple of very reasonable ones:

www.addr.com

and

www.doteasy.com

doteasy will give you a free 100 meg hosting solution and register your domain for you. I believe it will cost you 25 bucks a year at this time.

In all seriousness, it's not hard to do, just make sure you read the stuff so you can wrap your head around it.

addr.com has an online 24/7 support service.

[Water Dragon]

Just get a frikkin' myspace. It's like the KFM forum and match.com all rolled into one. And it's free.

[MasterKiller]

I use omnis.com to host my sites. $8.95/month, or $89.00/year if you pay in advance. 15GB storage.

[Yum Cha]

Also,
There are lots of domain name scams. That page attached to your domain looks like a generic set of content fed to that domain. The owners may have had some reason to believe you may want it back one day and thus hijacked it. Its not the kind of domain most squatters would be after.

Also, different registrars try to scam your domain into their management by sending you offers to renew your domain, sometimes years out before they expire. The idea being some bean counter makes an executive decision without knowledge of the service and sends out a cheque.

Just find a one-stop-shop where you can host your site and maintain your domain, and ignore all the emails from other shops trying to get you to renew through them.

[Royal Dragon]

So it may be avalaible?

See, I did all that through Paramount, till they went under. It was nice, I had a good host, cheap. I even had the ability to host my forums there. I had planned to use "Anyboard" for the forums, but I never got around to installing the software. I do have several forums on Anyboard's servers though (Still active). All my emoticons, and backgrounds and stuff were on my site, and when it went down, my forums became a bit crippled.

[David Jamieson]

rd-

get a doteasy account and you can run a phpbb off of it.

that would let you have a forum that is easily as nice or even better than this one if you take the time and energy to add to it.

if that's important to you.

[Royal Dragon]

Anyboard is comparable to this forum. It's ultra configurable, so I could run it like this one, or a simple as an old wwwboard BBS.

[MasterKiller]

I run a phpBB and a YaBB board.

The phpBB runs a lot faster, but man does it get buggy quick. Plus, I have some cross-browser issues with some of the add-on mods that don't work the same in Firefox as they do in IE.

[David Jamieson]

i have both boards as well.

don't get too many bugs in the phpbb though.
what are you getting mk?

[MasterKiller]

Mostly, the admin controls get buggy, like setting up rank titles and groups, etc...

Also, I installed an image re-size mod that shrinks embedded images to 650 pixels so they don't blow out my layout, but it doesn't work in every browser, or even every version of IE.

[David Jamieson]

groups are created in the admin but managed by the group admin (main moderator) which is in the functions that are seperate from the admin panel.

I found that out by digging around.

but yeah, it can get a bit clunky.

[Royal Dragon]

I have had issues writing for IE and Firefox as well. They just don't read HTML the same way.

[MasterKiller]

I design for Firefox, because if a site looks good Firefox it will most likely work similarly IE; however, the converse is almost never true. You can fudge a lot in IE (especially with CSS) that other browsers just won't let you get awat with.

[ShaolinGirl]

Yes, thanks, That is a good idea.

I was poking aorund that site you linked to above. Minimum bid on my old URL is $200.00

Isn't that sick?

Bummer. I'm not a fan of those who buy domains by the buttload and then sit on them, depriving everyone, simply for a chance to make a sale (which most do not).

Yeah, register your new domains at GoDaddy.com for $9.20 a year or at least don't pay more than $10 for a domain name, unless you're getting some package deal with a hosting plan as well.

I do NOT like register.com, who charges a whopping $35 :eek: for either one or two years: Either way it's too much. They're just capitalizing off their name and, worse in my book, they send out snail-mail that looks like a bill in an attempt to con the unwary into re-registering with them. :mad:

As far as hosting is concerned, I'm about to move to http://3ix.org/, where it's a mere $1 a month for 100 MB of space and 10GB of traffic and there's several other good plans. The accounts there all run cpanel and Fantastico, which has everything you need in user-friendly form.

I currently host at lucidityhosting.com, which is like $5 a month per site, and they're good but $5 adds up quickly, so that's why I'm switching to 3ix.org's 5-site plan for $5 a month.

I can also recommend http://www.netfirms.com, where they do a package deal with your domain registration. I used them a long time ago and they're excellent but I don't know what their prices are these days.

And remember, when you're out there comparing hosts, make sure they're running some form of Unix on their servers (running Microsoft on your servers will increase the likelihood of a successful hack).

[David Jamieson]

?

IIS servers are as secure or more secure than apache servers.
yes microsoft gets targeted by hackers, but that's because of their ubiquity.

unix, or apache servers are gnu and every geek in geekdom knows the ins and outs of an apache server.

Besides, security is something you will have to pay more to get a lot of.

you'll get 5 9's out of a IIS server more often than an apache server. But they are more expensive to host on. that would be the prohibitive cost factor for me.

register.com offers starter packages including registration of your domain and hosting for less than 6 bucks a month. Not that im propping them, but I think your info is outdated a little there shaolin girl. :)

It's highly competitive these days and unless you want a country specific suffix, domains of .net ,org .com . biz .tv are pretty cheap no matter where you go.

rd is the kind of zero dollar or low dollar customer who can shop around a bit.
Do your due dilligence on really cheap offers and fully understand what you're getting before you get it.

[Royal Dragon]

My last site was $35.00 a year. I was more concerned with one that I could run a forum on.

[Eddie]

RD,
if you still struggling with hosting, I can help. My friend owns a hosting company with servers in Germany. His prices are also much better than those of what you and everyone else has mentioned, and with more value and support. You'd also be able to run a forum. These days they use Drupal for forums, but best to send me a pm if you are still interested.

We can register the domain, srt up the hosting and everything for you at once time.

[dougadam]

You own the url. And you can use any hosting company that you want. Also it is wise to backup your site often.