http-domain-illustrationStarting from today, this website changes its main URL from robertsetiadi.net to robertsetiadi.com

I obtained robertsetiadi.com domain few months ago, after years of failed efforts. It all started back in 1999 when I was still a total beginner in building a website. Back then, Internet was not nearly as popular as it is today. Only very few people knew about the Internet and most of them only used it for email and browsing. Smartphones did not exist (yet), people still used “normal” mobile phones that can only do one thing: phone calls. No Internet. No Facebook. No social media. Even SMS as text messages were considered as “new” technology. So, when I saw an advertisement of “free dot com domain”, I foolishly jumped to register robertsetiadi.com to get one year of free domain. After that one year, I did not renew my dot com domain because I was super scared of online transaction using credit card. Instead, I opt for other domain name that can be purchased without credit card transaction. I thought I can always get my domain back when I need it. Clearly I was very wrong.

After that one year, robertsetiadi.com domain was owned by the service that provided me with one year free domain and after that company went bankrupt, there was no way to start using their service so I can re-claim my domain. The domain itself was never used for something useful. Most of the times it only served script-generated contents, presumably for a company’s SEO. For many years, I checked whois database and robertsetiadi.com has changed owners several times. I contacted them several times. Some were simply ignored. Some replied with with fantastic price if I want to purchase the domain ($10,000+). Some others replied me with legal threats from their lawyers.

Last year I finally got a real chance to reclaim robertsetiadi.com when I read about a service that will try to snatch our preferred domain with reasonable cost. Of course they provide no guarantee that the domain will end up as ours. But since I didn’t need to pay anything unless my domain is obtained, I decided it was worth the risk.

Months of waiting, then I finally got an email that robertsetiadi.com domain was finally purchased under my name for a price far below $100. I was excited. But then I checked on the registrar link given to me, the registrar website looked like an old site with very poor design taste and shady look n feel. So I began to doubt was this site really a legit registrar. I did some checks and found it is actually a valid registrar, but many people had posted in various discussions that they felt the same as I did, the site looks dodgy. Immediately I planned to move the domain to my current registrar for my other domains. Turned out, I could not move a domain to a new registrar within 60 days since the last move. Since the process of purchasing the domain involved registrar move, so I had to wait 60 days.

The waiting process was not so hard to pass because I had plenty of real life works to do. Some of them had crazy deadlines. So it was very easy to forget that I had this unfinished task of dealing with my new domain. When I finally had time for domain transfer, I initiated the registrar transfer process around 10 days ago. The process was completed on 12 June 2015.

Now that I finally have reclaimed robertsetiadi.com domain, I was in doubt whether I should use this new domain as my website’s primary domain or not. After long considerations, I decided to use robertsetiadi.com as my main URL now. The process of migration took about 15 minutes this morning. It was easy because both domains are hosted with the same company, under the same account and same username. So moving all my files was just as easy as dragging files in FTP from one folder to another. After moving the files, I also need to migrate the database, along with adjusting my WordPress settings to the new domain.

I will try to make the transition as smooth as possible. All bookmarks to the old domain should work without any problem because I have set up full domain forwarding from robertsetiadi.net to robertsetiadi.com address. I intend to keep renewing robertsetiadi.net domain for as long as I have this blog anyway.