Renewing Your Custom Domain Registration

Some Blogger blog owners, having experienced the anxiety of custom domain setup, intend to carefully maintain their domain registration.

We see a few queries, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, about domain registration renewal.

How do I make sure my registration gets renewed?

or

How do I renew registration before it expires?

or, possibly

My blog now displays a search page! Have I been hacked?

Some registration issues will depend upon how the domain registration was originally purchased.

Domains purchased directly from a registrar - whether using eNom, GoDaddy, or a third party registrar, will have to be renewed directly from the registrar. It's not possible to migrate a direct purchase to Blogger / Google registration for payment, any more than to use the Blogger / Google automatic DNS setup. Once you purchase domain registration from a registrar, you are on your own.

If you used Blogger "Buy a domain", Google Apps, or Google Wallet, to purchase the domain registration, you should get email reminders when registration is expiring. However, this will depend upon whether your Blogger / Google account, under which you purchased the registration, uses an active and accessible email address.

If you choose to anonymise yourself by using a bogus or inactive email address for your Blogger or Google activities, don't expect to get email reminding you, or allowing you to renew domain registration.

The most reliable way to assure the domain remains registered is to use domain auto renewal. You can check your auto renewal settings using the Google Apps administrator account, for the domain (now called the "Admin Console").

For domains purchased before December 2012, you'll use email from Google Apps, or an entry in your Google Wallet log, to retrieve the token to setup your Google Apps account. For domains purchased after November 2012, you will have only a limited access Google Apps account, which you should reset the password, to access.

If you intend to use domain auto renewal, make sure that the bank account (credit, or debit) is active, and currently paid. If your bank rejects the payment, you should get a notice - but again, this will come reliably when the email account associated with the domain is active and accessible by you.

If you do not renew registration on time, depending upon the registrar, the domain may be changed to point to a domain parking server, where the registrar will serve ads. Some registrars will serve ads which you, or your readers, won't appreciate.

If the domain registration has expired, and the domain was purchased from Blogger / Google, you may be able to submit late payment, and renew now.

If your original charge fails and you’re unable to resolve the form of payment issue within 7 days, you may still be within the grace period for renewals. If you’re still within 19 days of the renewal date, you can try again using any Google Wallet account by visiting http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/renew-domain/primary-domain-name, where primary-domain-name is the domain name you are trying to renew.

In some cases, once late payment has been processed, your registration may resume, with no long lasting ill effects. In other cases, you may end up having to setup the DNS addresses.

The best renewal experiences, of course, start with advance planning.

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