FreshPorts goes offline
I’m sorry, but the FreshPorts website
is offline because the domain registration bill wasn’t paid.
Back on 8 June, I submitted
a change to Network Solutions requesting
that the billing contact be changed. They sent me back this reply:
We have received your request to modify the domain name record listed above. However,
we are unable to process it at this time because we cannot verify its authenticity.We have sent an e-mail notification message to the administrative and technical
Guardians for this domain name, asking them to approve or disapprove of the change you
have asked for. We will follow the first set of instructions we receive.
And I promptly forgot all about it.
I never heard back.
But it seems that today they deactivated the domain. Fair enough. But I
have several question for them:
- Where did the message to "the administrative and technical Guardians"
disappear to? - Why was there no follow up before deactivating the accounts?
- If I didn’t receive the message to the "administrative and technical
Guardians", who did? - Are you going to activate the sites for a few weeks until the bill is paid?
As far as I can tell, Network Solutions have stuffed up. And I’m not happy about
it.
I have no idea how long this will take to get fixed. Until this, use this
temporary link: http://freshports.freebsddiary.org/ (this link no longer works).
Fixed (added on 6 July 2000)
OK! About 24 hours after I first became aware of the problem and
about 36 hours it was deactivated, FreshPorts is back online. I’ll write something
up over the weekend and try to explain everything that happened. Right now, I think
there are some aspects of Network Solutions latest security features which need to be
fixed.