With the recent elephant hunting and godaddy supporting SOPA, it was time for me to take my business elsewhere. I've learned a lot about transferring domains, I don't remember it being this hard when I moved from joker.com to godaddy, but I'm not surprised they make it hard.
IMPORTANT: If you don't want any downtime with your domain make sure you have your DNS somewhere else other than godaddy.
IMPORTANT: If you don't want any downtime with your domain make sure you have your DNS somewhere else other than godaddy.
So to transfer your domain to you need to:
- make sure it's not locked
- get the EPP (authorization code)
- make sure it's not privacy protected. (turn off domains by proxy)
These are all easy to do as long as the email address domains by proxy has is accurate and still works. if not, you need to submit a proof of ID to them and request a new email address.
If you bought your domain though google apps for your domain (GAFYD) it's a little harder, you need to log into domains by proxy to turn off that feature. Luckily I found this forum post how to turn off privacy for godaddy via domainsbyproxy.com. Steps to do it are:
- Go to domainsbyproxy.com and click login
- Click 'Forgot your login information?' and then Retrieve your customer number.
- Get an email with your customer number, then
- Reset your password and then login and cancel the service.
- https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/EXAMPLE.COM/DomainSettingsAdvancedDns
- Log into godaddy with the login username/password displayed on the page at the aboive URL.
- Unlock the domain and request that they email you an authorization code. This is what everyone else calls an EPP code.
- Make sure the domain is unlocked.
More on DNS: The moment the transfer starts godaddy'll shut down any DNS they were serving for you and those old dns server settings will transfer to your new registrar and you'll have to wait until everything is set up at your new registrar before you can update them. I used to use everydns but they're no longer around, I just ended up running bind on my linux box at home and putting a hole in the firewall, it's only for a few days.
I moved my domains to namecheap.com which is part of enom, I used coupon code SOPASUCKS. There's also a coupon of byebyegd but it's not as good. I was also looking at gandi.net (turned off by the no bullshit tagline) and I think I would have preferred hover.com I hear they have a coupon of SOPA for now. I was a bit sad that it took 12 hours after my domains transferred for them to show up in my admin console, They said they were having unusually high load of transfers right now ;)
Turns out they'd really like namecheap to be the best hit when you search for Domain Registration. I'll play along. They were super helpful and responsive during my transfers and I'm very happy with them.
Turns out they'd really like namecheap to be the best hit when you search for Domain Registration. I'll play along. They were super helpful and responsive during my transfers and I'm very happy with them.