rut roh! {conspiracy fodder} mybb and xenforo sites taken offline in the same week ! and both domains were held at namecheap. maybe their credit card was canceled. oh, oh !!! maybe not renewing was intentional, and this is the end of it! {/conspiracy fodder} .... but seriously folks,.................. who wants to contact namecheap and renew it for them? fwiw, I think this was their IP: 184.173.238.122
Actually, I think they might have. I could be wrong, but the domain doesnt expire until tomorrow. Its like the nameservers are gone..
they may be going by UK time, namecheap's whois shows expiration at 04 Jun 2012 02:42:00 which is in the past (UK time). I was a bit concerned when the IP address didn't take me there, but forwarded me to the domain (which is parked). but I suppose that forwarding could have been set up long ago, to keep folks from accessing the site by IP. IP forwarding would be set by the (xenforo) server, I think.
Ive never let a domain accidentially expire. Is this what happens when you dont pay your domain bill?
The last known IP was 184.173.238.122 and that server is still there, so it's likely just that someone didn't pay the renewal fee in time. I use namecheap as well and they send out a fair amount of warning when a domain is set to expire. I believe that parked page is standard when a namecheap registered name goes over the expiration point. That would be set at the namecheap level. At the very least, I have things set on auto-renew where possible. (Which is possible with namecheap) Anyone running a site serious, would have that configured, in my opinion. I guess once people start waking up in the UK, things will get sorted.
By the way, if you edit your hosts file and add Xenforo com with their IP, 184.173.238.122 -- you can access the site.
Briefly tabbing back and forth, I saw Kier come online and then disappear. Ashley just showed up a short while ago. Certainly, one of them can renew this domain? Will check back again later today and see if there's any progress.
Doesn't exactly install confidence seeing them renew the domain for just 1 year, sounds like very short-term plans are in motion to me. Lucky they got the domain back!
I would also just renew 1 year in such a case AND change the domain registrar ASAP. It is bad business practice to cut it off and show company ads at expiration date. There is a grace period of 30 days at ICANN to renew a domain after it is expired. Maybe they had a wrong email address with them and didn't get the warnings. But it isn't looking good, giving the circumstances around Xenforo lately. What happens if they REALLY shut down the site? All resources and the community will be gone. This will render the software almost useless.
Just to say, there's nothing wrong with NameCheap to change away from them ASAP. They are one, if not the best domain registers out there. I've used them for many, many years and always get ample time with emails sent informing me if a domain is due for renewal. This is purely an over-sight on the part of XenForo, my guess wrong email listed with NameCheap 'KAM' should have updated. And I'm not sure why your saying only register a domain for 1 year? I mean, can understand that with a newbie buying a worthless domain, expecting they might not run a site for more than a year at first. But your talking here about a registered company brand name "XenForo.com", so you'd expect them to at least put a few years on it to be safe. Not just renew it for 1 year only. That makes it look as though they've got very short sighted plans. If it was me that domain would be topped up to 3-5 years minimum, because it sends out a very bad signal to customers only being renewed again for a single year.
