.ie Timebomb

It intrigues me how little attention Irish companies pay to their domain names. There seems to be little awareness that domain names have become valuable company assets and as such should be treated that way. Basic facts such as who is listed as the domain owner and most importantly who is listed as the administration contact seem to be largely ignored.

What companies are failing to realise is that if 'someone' doesn't get a notification that a domain needs to be renewed and it lapses then that companies website will disappear from the internet. Worse still the email system could fall down also and can anyone remember the world before email? In the big bad dotcom world things could go from bad to worse if the lapsed domain gets snapped up by a bottom feeding competitor or one of a plethora of websites that actively seek out these up for grabs domains. Of course this is worst case scenario stuff and unlikely in the highly regulated .ie sphere.

There are a few simple steps you can take today to check your domain name and its current status. I would recommend that companies start to pay more attention to this (that means take ownership in corporate speak) rather than leaving it to the web developers.

.ie Quick Check
Visit IEDR.ie and enter your .ie domain in the Whois Search form.
Hopefully you will receive a listing similiar to the one displayed below which I have -> broken apart to see what it all means <-

• domain: domain.ie ->Self Explanatory, the registered name
• descr: Company Name -> The Companies Legal Name
• descr: BODY CORPORATE (LTD,PLC,COMPANY) -> The type of company
• descr: Discretionary Name -> the domain type
• admin-c: ABC123-IEDR -> this is the IEDR's unique identifying tag for the Administration Contact for this domain
• tech-c: DEF123-IEDR -> and this is the technical contacts IEDR Handle.
• renewal: 01-January-2009 -> no explanation needed
• status: Active
• nserver: NS.HOSTINGCOMPANY.COM -> this is where the domain is currently hosted
• nserver: NS2.HOSTINGCOMPANY.COM -> this is the backup host server
• source: IEDR

• person: Admin Contact Name
• nic-hdl: ABC123-IEDR
• source: IEDR

• person: Billing Contact Name
• nic-hdl: DEF123-IEDR
• source: IEDR

The admin contact is the most important piece of information here. It is crucial that this is correct as every other detail can then be edited. If the person listed is not known at your company, perhaps it is someone from the original web development company, perhaps its someone who has left your company, then you need to get this information updated.

To do this you must first ascertain what the admin contact email address is.

Start by copying the admin-c IEDR handle

Then click here https://www.domainregistry.ie/PasswordReminder.php

Paste in the IEDR handle, click search, when the admin contact details appear click the 'reset password' button. Check your e-mail to see if a password reset message arrives to anyone in your company. If it does, happy days, use the information to reset the password (basic security update), then login and update any details that are out of date.

If the email does not arrive then you should send a fax to the IEDR and request that they change the admin contact on the domain and also update the stored email address. There is a standard template (with instructions) that can be copied and pasted onto company headed paper here - https://www.domainregistry.ie/UpdateAdminContact.php

Once this has been done you can repeat the steps above to recover the login details.

Hopefully this simple exercise will save you a few headaches down the line.
Paul Keane
graphics-it.com