I got a call yesterday from a panicked friend- Ombience, the company responsible for putting her website together, has gone belly up. She called their phone #, which is now answered by a man who said, "this is my new phone #, I'm getting lots of calls for Ombience." The email addy is bouncing messages back though the company's site still live...

The crux of the dilemma is her domain was registered by this group, their name is the listed admin. info in whois! Not only that, but it is an old office they moved out of some time ago. My friend hadn't any access or knowledge of her site's server location either. The domain is do for renewal in January.

Yikes! How could a web dev company not put the client's info on the domain registration? Or at least change the admin info before they dissolve! I understand you can't change domain registration details 60 days before it expires. That boundary is only 3 months from now.

She asked me to figure this, upgrade, and relocate her site. When building sites, the domains I register list my client as the official admin contact; the server space is set up so they aren't locked out. I supply them with a copy of the site's files. If I vanish into thin air, my clients wouldn't have this dilemma to deal with.

So far we've had NO LUCK trying to find these Ombience people. I wrote letters to all the folks involved, and a couple web dev domain name gurus I greatly respect. Jonathan Lee, at 123CheapDomains.com, is one of them. Bob took this photo of me walking Scrappy by a place uphill at 123. I made this cute graphic and sent it to 123CheapDomains as a thank you thing. My favorite Domain registrar rocks!

I sent it with this note, "Thanks for the straightforward story. I'm going to call Dotster Monday. After all, the legal name of my client is obviously related to the domain. I've been perusing the ICANN site reading legalese. Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy is daunting."

oh how scary it is. But I'm hook, line, and sinker caught up by such high-tech geek-girl learning new tricks challenges.

I have some guidance worthy of sharing with anyone who has a domain name. Make sure you have your own contact information listed as the administrator for your domain registration. By law, whoever's info is listed there OWNS THE DOMAIN. Bad, Very Bad if it isn't you. Would you pay rent for a place you couldn't have the key to access and live in?