A few months ago, I was making my rounds in domain-land and noticed a very high profile TLD had expired, davidrussell.net. Now, it’s not the most amazing domain in the world for most people, but it is the second most amazing domain in the world if your name is David Russell. And my name happens to be David Russell.
The previous owner, David Russell from New Zealand, must have let the registration lapse. After a few days monitoring whois, I noticed the domain move from the 30-day grace period and into the delete phase. Oh boy! I knew I might have a shot at this, so I read up on the subject at a four-year old article from Mike Davidson. The information still packs a punch today and I decided to take Mike’s advice and enlist the services of Pool.com to register the domain on my behalf as soon as the domain had been completely deleted from the registry and was available to the public.
On the delete day, I monitored whois like a hawk to see who would win the domain. (There could have been others interested and doing the same thing I was doing, so it was not a certainty that I would acquire the domain.) Domains usually delete starting around 2:00 pm ET and the actual drop can happen any time within a window of a few hours. So around 1:45 pm, I started querying whois in Terminal every 5 to 10 minutes. Around 2:45 ET I noticed the domain ownership had changed hands. I had checked only minutes earlier and the information hadn’t changed yet. So this new registrar snapped the name up fast! It was a domain registrar out of Canada called The Black Cow. I checked their home page and saw the Pool.com logo. I logged into my Pool.com account and saw the confirmation that the domain had been acquired on my behalf. Woo-hoo! Within about 20 minutes, the domain was actually resolving to my server at 1and1. Holy cow. That was blazing fast. (In order for this to happen, you’ll need to set up your DNS settings in your Pool.com account prior to acquiring a domain. They’ll automatically assign those settings to the domains they purchase on your behalf.)
So I’ve moved away from davidrussell.org. I still own it, of course, along with many other TLDs associated with my name. But davidrussell.net is my new official domain. The website migration is mostly complete. If you spot any dead or problematic links, let me know. Within a few days, I’ll have my email completely migrated as well.
If you are eyeing a deleting domain, I highly recommend Pool.com. I was absolutely impressed with the speed at which they acquired this domain for me.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times—if a top-level domain that matches your name is still available, you are not being wise leaving it unregistered. Snag it now! ...Now!
