Domain melodrama

When I decided to start Oregon Literary Review a couple years ago, the first thing I did was purchase the domain oregonliteraryreview.org, amazed actually that it was available. Then I looked around for a web host. I didn't want to host it at the university because I wanted total control.

I settled on Avid Hosting, a company with a good track record at the time. Then I did something I'm thankful for: instead of transferring the domain to Avid, I opened a new free domain there, oregonlitrev.org, and directed the former to the latter. I can't remember why I did this except that the original domain was at Yahoo! and I liked the interface there. I didn't know what I'd be getting into at Avid.

The downside of this is that those making bookmarks or creating links to OLR usually used the Avid domain, not my original domain. I always told people to use the full original one but then they'd see the actual address as oregonlitrev.org and use that. This now has caused problems.

Avid sold out and apparently the new owner is a notorious Internet King of Porn and Scams. The site immediately went down -- and of course, all the sites it hosted went down as well. Phones weren't answered. No email possible. Snail mail ignored. You get the picture.

Meanwhile oregonlitrev.org can't be transfered because the administration of it is at Avid.

Frustration!

Of course, I have EVERYTHING backed up on my hard drive. So I found another web host and uploaded everything there -- oregonliteraryreview.org, the full preferable domain, goes there. The Avid domain still goes nowhere.

But I'm thinking, there must be a way for me to get control of oregonlitrev.org again since theoretically I own it. But how?

The wondrous Internet! It didn't take long to find a forum filled with Avid victims who also wanted control of their domains back. And lo! a few found out how to do this and shared the info -- but you needed proof of purchase. I had all the original receipts, of course, so I just zapped them off to the company that apparently can fix this. If I can get control of oregonlitrev.org again, then I can redirect it and all will be back to normal.

What an adventure.

Moral: if you link to Oregon Literary Review, use oregonliteraryreview.org, which always will be correct.

Famous last words? Well, correct as long as Yahoo! is around.

The bigger picture.