Gonedaddy

Last Thursday marked an anniversary for me. But not one that should ever be celebrated; one that taught me an important lesson. A year ago, I opened my inbox and saw an email from Godaddy, a domain hosting service. The email said, “Your domain is about to renew.” And I said, “Nice try, ‘Godaddy’. How stupid do you think I am? I’m not falling for your scam!” I vaguely remembered looking into their services years ago when I was thinking of changing blog platforms, but how dare they try to pilfer money from me! Smug in my own competency, I went to Godaddy and cancelled my account with them as retribution for their fake “you owe us money” trick. They sent me a follow up email but I ignored it and put it in ‘trash’.

About half an hour later, it was time to set up the next day’s authors, so I clicked on the shortcut to the DarkWinter Press and Lit Mag website, which is a WIX website, and I got a message:

This page no longer exists.

I tried again, using a different link and got the same result. Then my blood ran cold. I messaged my neighbour, who set up the website and still does web management for me when I need it:

Me: Hey. Um. Do we use Godaddy for anything?

Neighbour: Yes, it’s the hosting platform for your website.

Me: But my website is on WIX…

Neighbour: Right, but you need Godaddy to find it, remember? We discussed this.

Me (panic rising): Oh, ok. So if I, for some bizarre reason, happened to cancel my Godaddy account…?

Neighbour: You would have deleted your website. You didn’t do that, did you?!

Me: OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE??!!

Over two years of content—poof, and it was all my stupid fault. I started to cry. The only thing to do, my neighbour suggested, was to call Godaddy and see if they could help. I had my doubts, given my “cancel my account now, muthafukka” attitude. It took a few minutes to get through, at which point I was full on sobbing. A woman finally answered, and I managed to explain between sobs what had happened. “Please help me, I’m so sorry, I’ll do anything,” I told her, expecting that it was irreversible. But no. “Don’t worry,” she said. “This happens more often than you think. We have the whole site archived. If you pay the renewal and an additional $25 for the retrieval, we can get it back up in a couple of hours.” And let me tell you, I would have paid a hell of a lot more than that. I’ve never been so relieved in my life. Ironically, the woman’s name was Angel. And sure enough, a couple of hours later, when I clicked my shortcut, DarkWinter immediately appeared like a beautiful beacon in the dim light of my office, just like an angel said it would.

Which is why, last Thursday when I saw the renewal notice, I smiled, nodded, and whispered, “You Godaddy.”

In other news, if you didn’t see my special post from yesterday, let me reiterate that my new short story collection, Dark Nocturnes, was just released. I’m still over the moon and if you want to buy it, here’s the link: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0DY8B6C1K?tag=a_fwd-20&dplnkId=61609a9b-828a-4cb0-aa8f-eed2f61e7541&nodl=1

30 thoughts on “Gonedaddy”

  1. Since I’m a Luddite, my wife set up my blog. I know there’s the blog platform and the hosting service — two different entities — and I have them both on auto-renewal, because the last thing I want is for ten years of content to be wiped out! I’m glad your story had a happy ending!

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  2. People who work with me are all too familiar with my stance that a lot of technology is much more complicated than it needs to be. Over my long career in libraries I’ve seen computers become much more powerful but with that comes a lot of “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should…” At the same time I’m so grateful to IT people who help me. I’ve been in your situation and want to send a gift basket to every tech support person who’s pulled me out.

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  11. Ouch. Deepest sympathies. I’ve been with Godaddy for…hmm…twenty years? I originally bought three domain names when I setup my first website, but when WordPress.com came along I cancelled all but one of them. I keep that one because I need it for my email which they will have to pry from my cold, dead digital fingers [hate Gmail].

    Really glad to know that there is a ‘way back’ if I don’t renew for any reason. Thanks for that very important bit of info.

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