It happened when I switched domain registrars last week from GoDaddy (which is just sort of automatically assigned when you purchase a domain through Google Blogger and checkout) to Namecheap. The switch was because of the whole GoDaddy elephant slaughter thing.
Well, it turns out transferring is not as easy as they make it sound. In addition to having to jump through hoops to find the authentication code to release the domain to Namecheap, apparently you have to configure some things in the inner workings of the site too.
When I realized it was offline, I emailed Namecheap alerting them to this and trying to figure out what was wrong. Their first response was this beauty:
"Unfortunately, there are no host records for your domain at the server.
Please contact your hosting provider in order to resolve this issue.
In case you have been using your previous registrar's nameservers before the transfer of your domain to us, please do the following to switch domain to our default nameservers:
- Login to your Namecheap account;
- Click Domains -> manage domains;
- Click on the domain itself;
- In the left-hand menu click Transfer DNS To Web Host;
- Check "Use Namecheap Default DNS Servers";
- Click Save changes."
What the fuck?
Well, I actually managed to figure out how to get the DNS (whatever that is) transferred, but Too Saucy still wasn't online, so I emailed again, only to get this gem in reply:
"the reason for this is that the DNS assigned to godaddy does not allow us to have any control of the zone records. I see that the domain is now using our Dns however have you configured the domain to point where you once had it pointing?"
What the fuck?
Hey guys, the whole point of using the Blogger template is I don't need to know any of that tech stuff, and, frankly, I don't want to know any of that tech stuff.
Well, after a few emails and exasperated Twitter postings, a tech at Namecheap finally did the necessary changes for me, but, really people, if you're going to offer your service to people disgusted with GoDaddy, at least make it customer-friendly.
Why wasn't any of this stuff explained at the beginning of the transfer process? And surely you must know, a lot of bloggers don't deal with any of the tech stuff. Do you really think a lot of folks know about "DNS" and "zone records"?
And also use proper punctuation in your emails.
