My plans over the holidays included working on this website to update some features, try to sell some ads, and write and schedule some posts about upcoming events. Instead, I spent more than two weeks dealing with tec
hnical issues, which led to one of the worst things that could happen to a blogger.
I lost my website to someone else.
And it turned out to be a great thing.
First, a little background. I’ve experienced extreme difficulty over the past few months in attempting to transfer the site’s domain name from one hosting service to another. Each time I thought it had been done successfully, it wasn’t. This resulted in the site shutting down a few times over the past several months until it could get back online, usually within a day or two.
It shut down again on Christmas Eve. A flurry of messages, texts and phone conversations among the involved parties followed over the next week. It seemed that it had come down to one final step that would have been done on Monday, Jan. 5. Except that on Sunday, I tried to log onto the site and up popped an entirely new page under the Beer in Florida name.
New look. New content. None of it mine.
My stomach dropped. Four years of content and brand building, potentially down the drain. Because of another issue that I won’t go into here, I immediately assumed that it was a nefarious action. I posted on Facebook – and I’m paraphrasing – that I was going to find this dirty rotten no-good SOB and use all legal means at my disposal to do nasty, dirty things to him, her and/or it. I was pissed.
Then Sunday evening, there was a message on my Facebook account that started: “Hey Gerard, I am the one that bought beerinflorida.com in the godaddy auction for expired domain names. There was no posts in 8 months so I assumed it was a dead site.”
My stress level went from red to yellow. It seemed to be a human being who was given faulty information. I hoped I could work with this fellow, Dan Randall.
(Note: This is not his real name. Sometimes on the intertubes and social medias, information gets jumbled up and comes out looking like a U.S.S. Enterprise transporter malfunction. I don’t want this guy to inadvertently get a reputation as some sort of shady character).
I responded to Mr. Randall, and in the course of correspondence, I discovered that he is not just a human being, but a good one. Perhaps even an exceptional one.
Not only is he tangentially involved in the Florida craft beer scene, but his day job is in website management. He just wanted to try his hand at beer writing, and legitimately thought he was buying a dormant web site domain to get started. He used his expertise to help get my content back onto the site, and put ownership back into my hands.
Beer in Florida, my friends, has returned, and I have a new friend in brew. We are already talking about getting together in the near future for pints. And when he restarts his blog with another domain, you can bet that I’ll help him promote it as much as possible.
What started as a horror show turned into an uplifting fable with two morals.
The first, which is not new: Beer People are Good People.
The second, also not new: Stay away from GoDaddy (dot) com if you’re looking for a website host. They suck.
Cool story,
I’ve seen people spend six figures in litigation fighting over the ownership of domain names.
It can be just like losing your wallet. The majority of people will return it with all your money in it. Some will take the cash and return it. And a few A-holes will take the cash, maybe the credit cards, and throw the wallet in the trash.
Thanks for sharing a good story,
Conrad