With all the personal stuff that has been happening in my life this last year I let the domain name for my website expire due to my Debit card being out of date for my auto-renewal. By the time I finally had the mental energy to deal with the situation, some bastards rushed in and bought my domain name. Now they have Chinese porn displayed when you go there. Not a good look for my sculpture site. There are not even any video of me.
My Website hosting service Blackknight could not help me and said I would have to deal directly with the hijackers.
I have looked into it and there seems to be a company called Gname that says they will Broker the deal of buying it back. I am sure that this is all a scam and they are one and the same that nabbed the domain when they saw I missed a payment.
I really have no idea how much they want to extort me to buy it back but if there is one thing I have learned as an international man of mystery it is to never negotiate with terrorists. They can keep the feckin' Domain.
I decided to just register a new one called www.fleetingsculpture.ie which is the Irish domain suffix. The Dotcom one they can keep which although it may cause some confusion to those that are trying to find me by internet but, I am happier to have .ie as I am Irish and it seems that they have some safeguards in place should this ever happen again. I had to prove that I was who I said I was before they allow registration.
If people do come across the .com one, well, firstly they shouldn't be touching themselves like that and secondly, I hope they can understand what happened. Hopefully, the hijackers will give it up once they realise I ain't payin'.
To be honest, Hive has become my place on the internet and I would sooner direct people here to my blog.
Back Online
So, now I have my new website set up and running. Luckily, Blckknight was able to move my WordPress files across to the new domain name. But, something I have been wanting to do for ages is to have my Hive Blog embedded like it is part of the site. I will finish this cautionary tale by putting a call out. Does anyone know the best way to do this? I would like to have a page of all my blog posts on the site much like the way PeakD displays them. I have heard that there are plugins out there but can't find them.
I have discovered EXXP WP by martin lee but that seems to just repost your blog posts to Hive. I would like to go the other way. If anyone can help me it would be much appreciated.
Let this be a lesson for those that let their domain name expire. There is a whole industry out there waiting to snipe them, hoping to make a quick book.
Ammonite Aka Fleeting sculpture aka Daniel
www.fleetingsculpture.ie
Crap - I missed this since I am currently just infrequently here!
This is a problem, and what happened to you I've seen happening several times before. I had warned people about this many years ago. Exactly like yours, a female artist friend had her site turn into a Chinese Porn site as well. Not the only one, it seems they like to hijack artists sites.
My own websites (I have several) are hosted on Weebly, and they would send me warnings before something like this happens, because just recently it happened to me that I had a outdated credit card on there. But my payment options with that host include PayPal, so to forestall any such problems, I now switched it to PayPal, which is connected to two of my bank accounts (and one credit card), so no expiry problems there. I always have money in there (plus OD protection, just in case). There is no way, if set up properly, that you could miss a payment with PayPal. It goes down the list from your preferred option to next if the first one doesn't work, though I would not be too thrilled if it came out of the credit card because of the horrendous interest rates if you don't pay it off.
Btw, PayPal will also let you know if a credit card you listed with them has expired.
On top of all that, I have passwords on my PayPal accounts (I got 2 separate ones) that were generated by my Norton Security, and the estimate it would take several million years to crack them. Of course if you have passwords like that, you got to keep them in a safe, since they are impossible to remember (much like your keys here on Hive).
I will be more careful from now on and maybe keep an eye open for if the .com one comes back up for buying through the usual channels. I am sure it costs them something to keep it and when they see that I am not willing to buy they will probably let it go. I don't mind playing the long game.
I do see that I lack an SSL cert. Of course that is an optional extra that I need to purchase. I thought it came free before.
Thanks for the reply.
I publish my websites on Weebly, got a pro account, so the SSL comes with it for free (but you actually must enable it, not automatic). I think it is free on Wix also, but not sure.
btw - you ought to get SSL for your website http://fleetingsculpture.ie/ - it is a standard these days. Search engines would downrate a site without a security certificate.
Ah fuck. That's really shitty. Sorry man :-(
Thanks @demotruk it was a bit of a pain but I really don't use my website that often and those who want me will be able to find me.
i was so worried abt this.god bless u,stay always happy >3💓
Because my Hive Blog is still secure I will be ok. Thank you.
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