Why so much love for Namecheap on here? As far as I can tell, they've simply been in the right place at the right time and done some clever marketing in response to GoDaddy's general idiocy.
But for a few days now, HN has almost read like a long ad for one domain registrar that doesn't look like anything particularly special. Every other link seems to go to Namecheap's blog, or some other page on their site.
Genuine question - I'm not trying to be a self-appointed site moderator or cheerleading for some other company (although I do use Gandi myself), I'm just genuinely interested as to why Namecheap, and not some other registrar, other than the fact that Namecheap have jumped on this particular bandwagon.
The protest wouldn't work if there was confusion on where to go. I assume a large reason people went to go daddy was because of the recognition. People knew (or at least assumed due to its wide use) they were a trustworthy source. Without the movement designating an alternative, there'd probably be a lot less traction since people might want to spend more time gaining confidence in a new company.
simply because they do not support SOPA, are actively listening to the demand, they are cheap, and they have a good interface. That beats all the other options I looked at. I considered gandi.net, but couldn't justify the extra cost. The only feature I am missing right now is a registrar that accepts bitcoins.
I posted this after making this "rookie" mistake myself: feel free to add www.moserware.com -> 216.239.32.21 to your hosts file for the next few hours until I'm given access to change the DNS settings :)
I was directed to this page only after the transfer started (and thus after I could change this). Hopefully this might help others before you make the switch.
As far as I could tell, Namecheap doesn't allow uploading of zone files (GoDaddy allows you to export your DNS settings in this format). It sure would grease the slide for Namecheap (or any other provider, for that matter) if they offered this feature.
Another option is using freedns via Afraid.org. I discussed how I found this free dns provider here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3391687 I am really impressed so far...
I'm not 100% about the intricacies of how DNS works but is there no way for them to automatically mirror your DNS settings? That would make this process much much easier.
Yeah, a simple check to see what nameservers the domain is currently using and then warning about the possible downtime and offering to switch ahead of the transfer would have been a huge win.
I guess not because one of their steps is "Copy all your domain settings (host records, email settings etc) to our control panel." - who has time for that? :)
I signed up for DNSMadeEasy a few months ago so I could move away from my Registrar's slow & complicated DNS servers. I'm glad I did, the price is pretty good (I have 20 domains listed), their user interface is easy to use, and the template & zone transfer options are very useful for doing your migration.
I don't mean to be a jackass, but... duh? If you're using GoDaddy's nameservers, it stands to reason that you'd need to configure the new ones when namecheap isn't going to be able to point to a defunct GoDaddy account.
Gandi will even offer to mirror the DNS on import.
Agreed, it was a dumb mistake. I just wanted to let others know so they don't have to suffer the consequences as well of multiple hours of downtime waiting for things to finalize before you can change it.
Heh, sorry, didn't know this was spurred by a necessity. I'm one of those guys that researches things to death before I do them, even if my "liability" is 3 low traffic family email accounts in a domain registrar migration.