Confusion Over Custom Domain Expiration Dates, Caused By Google Apps Email

We're seeing some panic today, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, from a few blog owners who have received email, which implies that their custom domain registrations are approaching expiration - and can't be renewed.

I registered my domain several months ago, through Google. I have the receipt for the payment in my email, my Google Wallet account, and my credit card statement.

Why am I getting this email now, some months after registering my domain - but well before my registration should be expiring?

Our records indicate that the payment for registering your domain mydomain.com was unsuccessful.

Payment failures happen for a variety of reasons (such as insufficient funds or an expired card). You can update your payment information to resolve the issue.

Please log in to your account and update your payment information. If you take no action, your domain will not be renewed on .

This confusion is especially unfortunate, given the recent discontinuation of the very popular Google Domain Registration option, which drives the Blogger "Buy a domain" wizard. It is reminiscent of a similar episode, almost a year ago.

When this confusion is reported in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, it's not difficult to dispel the panic. Several helpful websites provide registration look up services for the domains in question - and allow us to easily verify that there is no sudden flood of registration problems.

• DomainTools.com
• Name.com
• Network-Tools.com

Overview for mydomain.com
Registrar Info
Name  ENOM, INC.
Whois Server  whois.enom.com
Referral URL  http://www.enom.com
Status  clientTransferProhibited

Important Dates
Expires On  December 01, 2013
Registered On  December 01, 2012
Updated On  December 01, 2012

We have identified a popular topic in Google Apps Forum: General Discussion, where this issue is being discussed, and which has been forwarded to Google Apps Support.

Please watch the Google Apps discussion, or this blog post, for updates. And get back to work, on your blog.

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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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Custom Domain Purchase - Getting By Without "Buy a domain"

Now that custom domain publishing is once again available, though without the option to buy a domain through Blogger, too many anxious Blogger blog owners are asking the obvious question

How do I buy a domain?

Not a lot of blog owners want to be told

Contact the registrar of your choice.

The backup to "Buy a domain" would be to buy a domain directly from a registrar - however, this presents too many challenges to the casual blog owner.

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(Update 2012/10/09): "Buy a domain for your blog" is once again part of the Publishing wizard.

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Fortunately, there is a substitute to "Buy a domain", available through Google. Google Apps - which is the support organisation for "Buy a domain" itself - provides the option to buy a domain, along with the Google Apps Dashboard. Google Apps does not use easy to remember URLs, unfortunately.

To use the Google Apps equivalent of "Buy a domain", you start from the "Home Page" for Google Apps.

http://google.com/a/domain

This currently redirects to

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/new3

which is titled

Get started with Google Apps for free

From here, you find the all important advice

Don't have a domain yet?
No Problem. You can register a new domain starting from $8 a year.

accompanied by the button "Find domain".

Hitting the "Find domain" button, you get a display that's similar in functionality to "Buy a domain" - except the pulldown list of available Top Level Domains is currently a bit different from the selections offered by "Buy a domain".

To get a better selection of Top Level Domains, you'll have to go to

https://www.google.com/a/signup/?hl=en&source=gafb-globalnav-en

Here you will have to fill out the "You and your business" form, and hit "Next". The next display will start with "Check Availability" - and will provide a much longer TLD selection list.

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