I want to remember a work story so I’m posting it here, and also I just want to test if I can still tell long winded stories. Warning long post.
So a friend approached me around the start of October about an issue that’s far too familiar. He has a wordpress website that was ok then went dormant pre covid and his hosting had lapsed, but not his domain (more on that later). He wanted to re activate it again given the amount of content he put in when he was active.
So I told him to get back to his previous webmaster and ask for access to the files and database. With that I would be able to fetch a copy and transfer it to my own server. Previous web hosting had not been billing him and just allowed his website to stop functioning due to non payment. My friend – now a customer – wasn’t paying attention so it went offline. That’s ok since all would be set right once we moved the files and database to another server. I normally host it at my own server, but I wanted to test my new Godaddy manager account which allows me to host clients using their service, so I set it up there.
Around two weeks later it turned out the domain had lapsed as well, which the client just found out a few days after approaching me. So it turns out his previous web host had been paying his domain all along every year, again not informing him at all. After my now client asked for access he was given a big bill for the previous payments which he promptly paid.
However the bill was extra extra big because it had a ‘redemption fee’. This fee is a fairly new way to make money in the hosting biz. What it is is that after the 30 day (I think) period after your domain lapses, you are given another 30 days to pay for it otherwise it will automatically be free to be bought by anyone. His domain was his actual name with a dot com, so it might seem useless to anyone else, but in the internet, website owners will pay for any kind of website visits even if they’re unintentional, so domains that had previously been getting a lot of traffic like his are almost immediately snapped up by new websites no matter how unrelated they are for the traffic.
But not to worry, his previous web guy said he’ll keep an eye on the end of the redemption fee period and will let my client know immediately once it is available so they wouldn’t pay the exorbitant fee.
Can you guess what happened? The morning the domain became available the previous web host tried to contact my client to inform him to buy it but the client was unavailable at the time. By that afternoon when my client was able to respond to his messages the domain had been snapped up by someone else. The previous web host could have just forked over the $11 to buy the domain for him and billed him later, but hey, he didn’t do it and that’s that, we’ll have to wait a year til we get a chance again.
Luckily my client had a different domain that was still ok, and he decided that we use that instead.
Two weeks previous to that I had already been able to successfully transfer the website to the new Godaddy server using a temporary domain name. It hadn’t been updated in years so I updated it to the latest version and it was functioning beautifully. All we needed was a domain.
This wasn’t an easy process considering the large size of the compressed file. I’m fortunate to still be able to use a console to use SSH and copy the file over, an old school technique that fewer admins are able to do anymore, I noticed.
Transferring the Domain to My Registrar
I gave the standard instructions to my client regarding domain registrar transfer which he relayed to the previous web host. Web host complied, but only halfway, because when I entered the URL into the new domain registrar it spit out an error saying the domain is still unlocked. So, I copied and pasted the error message to my client, my client forwarded the message to the previous web host and we waited.
At this stage it’s hard not to shake your head when thinking about his previous web host. He would not send you hosting billings and allow your services to lapse, but would continue billing for other services. He would say he will keep an eye out for a domain to be available, then when it does let it lapse again by not thinking of purchasing it in his behalf knowing he’d be reimbursed anyway. Now he says he’ll unlock a domain and then it turns out not to be the case. No wonder my client is aching to get out of that deal.
Anyway, the fam and I then went to Baguio for a short weekend vacay.
The Monday I return, I check the domain, still unlocked. It was still within the 5 day period so it was no big deal, but considering it’s just literally a switch you turn off at the domain registrar I’m curious why not just do that, but no one’s surprised anymore.
Finally I get an email that the domain is unlocked.
But wait, there’s more.
I login to godaddy and use their chat to ask for their name servers so I can point the domain at the registrar to their hosting. They give me a value, I input it, and wait. They also tell me to put in a A record on the DNS zone, which I do.
Half a day goes by, I check the URL DNS using a DNS Checker website and it keeps failing. Most hosts including mine usually say it takes 12-24 hours, but in truth and especially for Godaddy which has servers all over the world, propagation usually only takes an hour or so. I wait and keep trying, no go.
So I decided to login to Godaddy and again ask for help. I tell them I’m changing from the temporary domain to a new domain, they say ok, they check and the domain isn’t hosted with them. I say it isn’t, but it’s pointing to their servers using the nameserver values they gave me. They check, they say it isn’t. I tell them the nameservers I was given earlier for confirmation, they tell me THATS WRONG and they give A DIFFERENT SET OF NAMESERVERS from the earlier chat. I have question marks flying out of my head wondering why they gave me a different set of values just a few hours ago, but at this stage I just want it to work.
I entered the new nameservers at the registrar. I use the DNS checker website and BOOOM, it propagates within minutes of pressing the save button. If I hadn’t bothered to ask, we’d still be waiting for that 12-24 hour period. It didn’t even require an A record like they said earlier.
So after that, it was just a matter of updating and optimizing his now completely functioning website to the best possible safety and performance standards, which is a lot more detailed now due to the almost overwhelming number of security threats out there. But it got done, site is running fine, he is updating it, and most importantly, CLIENT IS HAPPY.
Post mortem
To be honest, while the above situation seems dire, it’s sadly very common. I would say 8 of 10 clients came from situations where their previous web guy or company either disappeared or are just plain unresponsive to the point of incompetence.
The above situation involved a guy with a semi – busy website, but I have clients whose websites directly or indirectly produce 10% to 50% of their income, and can quantify a day of downtime into tens of thousands of pesos. In these situations dealing with irate clients is an art in and of itself as it greatly adds on the pressure of fixing the issue.
The tech per se isn’t a problem. There are lots of guys capable of doing decent technical work. What’s key is the lack of professionalism, competence, responsiveness and just plain communication with clients that makes a tremendous difference.
This is the reason why I maintain a Consultancy Service. At the start I was just as skeptical about ‘consulting’, knowing in many cases it’s just a high falutin way to bill your clients more cash.
But there’s no denying there is a wide gaping distance between what makes the client happy and getting the thousand and one nitty gritty tech stuff to work. The client doesn’t want to or is able to think about details. He’s busy with other stuff, and just wants it to work. A Consultant’s job is to do anything that’s possible, inside and outside the box, to get it done, tech related or not. That’s what I see my role as.
I believe in this philosophy, and it allows me that great feeling of knowing for sure that a client has come to the right person when he has a problem like above.
That’s it, that’s all. Thanks for reading and go back to work now.
