BG down - domain expired

Oops.  Details below.

$ nslookup brassgoggles.co.uk
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

** server can't find brassgoggles.co.uk: NXDOMAIN

$ whois brassgoggles.co.uk

   Domain name:
       brassgoggles.co.uk

   Registrant:
       Amanda Jeffrey

   Registrant type:
       UK Individual

   Registrant's address:
      (CENSORED)
       Edgbaston
       West Midlands
       B15 3TQ
       United Kingdom

   Data validation:
       Registrant contact details validated by Nominet on 10-Dec-2012

   Registrar:
       Fasthosts Internet Ltd [Tag = LIVEDOMAINS]

   Relevant dates:
       Registered on: 24-Sep-2006
       Expiry date:  24-Sep-2014
       Last updated:  25-Aug-2012

   Registration status:
       Renewal required.
       *** This registration has been SUSPENDED. ***

   Name servers:
       ns1.dreamhost.com
       ns2.dreamhost.com
       ns3.dreamhost.com

   WHOIS lookup made at 06:29:14 25-Oct-2014

That is very surprising.  I managed to post not very long ago today, around 10 PM CST / 3 AM UTC

The expiration happened on the 24th of last month -so it kept running all this time? (not being an expert on the subject)

J. Wilhelm wrote:That is very surprising.  I managed to post not very long ago today, around 10 PM CST / 3 AM UTC

The expiration happened on the 24th of last month -so it kept running all this time? (not being an expert on the subject)

Domain expiration goes through a number of stages in a very rigid process. There are two warnings by email, and 30 days after expiration, the domain is removed from DNS and will no longer work. The domain can still be renewed now, but a charge of  £200 plus VAT applies after the 40 day point.

I can see the advantage of renewing the original domain name - not the least of which is recovering all of the members and visitors. But I just wonder what the situation is like now - I wonder if it would be cheaper to get a new domain, say Brassgoggles.com and possible to use brassgoggles.co.uk as a "pointer" to brassgoggles.com (is there any difference or is a pointer equivalent to a domain anyway?) - that way all the traffic inbound to brassgoggles.co.uk would be re-directed to the dot-com. I don't know if this makes any sense.

Some folks seem to be saying they are having no problems. But just to report, for me as of today Virgin Media is stating it doesn't exist. Can't access it through Firefox, Internet Explorer, the plethora of search engines or my history or bookmarks.

The 30 day period after expiration has expired too.

Looks like it's not been renewed.

So what happens?, where do we go now?

Well ultimately it's down to Proteus what happens next. I am assuming he didn't realise, although I'm guessing he's certainly been alerted to it by now. He may yet be able to re register the forum, albeit under a slightly different domain name, I don't know.

The expiry warning would have gone to Amanda - she was the creator of BG, and it's her details you see above (BTW could somebody please edit / remove her address from the above post!). I don't think Proteus would have been aware of this. Also it is possible the warnings were sent to another past administrator of the forum, Outa-spaceman...

The way it stands now, we are a little screwed until the domain can be re-registered. However a temporary domain can be used until that point. Cheapest & quickest way is to use a free dynamic DNS service and point that at the IP for our servers, at that point it will take around 24hrs for it to propagate through the DNS system.

At the moment, connecting via the IP address just gives a notification:

Brass Goggles is offline for maintenance
(503: Service Temporarily Unavailable)

However, I have no idea if this means Proteus knows about this, or if this was a something he set to show when the forum cannot be displayed for ANY reason...

Censored Amanda's street address, as requested. It's in the public WHOIS record, though; anyone can look it up.

It may be possible to redeem the domain without paying the extra £200 until day 40, which is 8 days away. Someone had better get busy.

The IP address is probably showing the "offline for maintenance" message because the site is on shared-IP hosting and doesn't have its own unique IP address. In that situation, you can't view the site without a domain known to the hosting service.

oldskoolpunk wrote:Censored Amanda's street address, as requested. It's in the public WHOIS record, though; anyone can look it up.

Yeah, but this forum is a little 'insecure' as regards to spammers and info harvesters. I have no idea if Amanda's address is still valid, it's been many years since I last heard of her.

The IP address is probably showing the "offline for maintenance" message because the site is on shared-IP hosting and doesn't have its own unique IP address. In that situation, you can't view the site without a domain known to the hosting service.

True, though there are a couple of ways around that. Having said that, I might be doing it wrong... Meh.
Anyone on Twitter? Obviously the domain expiration will affect Proteus' email address at BG, so could somebody tweet @brasstech (Proteus) and say there is a problem?

I'v tweeted him. Will inform you if I get anything back.

I did get an email notification that elShoggotho replied to the Minecraft thread, just minutes ago, so not sure how that happened o.0

EDIT: Might have accidentally done it twice <.< >.> The first tweet didn't show up at first, ok! .-.

Ok, this is a new development. elShoggotho (Germany) says he can access the board fine, perhaps it's just for those of us in the UK or US?

How does that even work?

Possibly.

I haven't the foggiest.

Well two possibilities. One, he's viewing the forum from a cached page, which means it'll disappear if he clears the cache. Or two, the expiration may not yet have registered in Germany. I'm assuming the forum is still actually there, It just appears access is being blocked in at least some areas, because the domain name has expired and the search engines can no longer locate it.

He was able to post, so I'm guessing second option

It can take around 24 HOURS (sometimes more) for the world wide DNS systems to sync up with new additions and removals from the list. Even then there are sometimes stragglers on smaller ISPs etc that remain out of date for quite some time.

Hmmm that has me thinking... I'm off to investigate something....

It seems that only the domain is affected. The forum is working correctly and can be reached by adding following line to the hosts file :

69.195.142.139 brassgoggles.co.uk

I have tried this 69.195.142.139 brassgoggles.co.uk and still cannot access the forum. Has this ever happened before? If the domain has expired, how could that have happened?

Mr. Consciousflesh wrote:It seems that only the domain is affected. The forum is working correctly and can be reached by adding following line to the hosts file :

69.195.142.139          brassgoggles.co.uk

Just tried adding this to my 'hosts' file - worked! Brassgoggles is viewable for me and I just posted to it.

Many  thanks,
Miranda.

Miranda.T wrote:

Mr. Consciousflesh wrote:It seems that only the domain is affected. The forum is working correctly and can be reached by adding following line to the hosts file :

69.195.142.139          brassgoggles.co.uk

Just tried adding this to my 'hosts' file - worked! Brassgoggles is viewable for me and I just posted to it.

Many  thanks,
Miranda.

503 Temporarily Unavailable?

Does anyone here know, or have any form of DIRECT contact with Proteus?

Even BrassGogglesTech on Twitter hasn't been active for over a month.

RockyB wrote:
503 Temporarily Unavailable?

You will get the 503 error if you try to connect using the IP address without passing the reference address ( like , by typing the IP directly into the browser ), because the forum uses a shared web server. If you created or modified the 'hosts' file and you get this error from brassgoggles.co.uk it means that your browser ignores the contents of the 'hosts' file. You should try different browser.

I'm starting to find the apparent lack of response from Proteus quite concerning. Can any of the mods at least please enlighten us as to whether they've had any contact with him lately?

Tried editing the hosts, getting the 503 on Chrome, Explorer and Firefox.