Forgetting your own (domain) name

There but for the grace of God Department… “The Washington Post said yesterday that it had inadvertently allowed the registration for one of its Internet domain names – washpost.com – to expire. That lapse had the immediate effect of shutting down the e-mail system that reporters and other Post employees use to exchange messages with the world, something they were unable to do for much of the day.

In a message sent to newsroom employees over another computer server yesterday morning, Steve Coll, the managing editor of The Post, wrote that ‘Network Solutions, which manages Internet addresses, apparently notified The Post of the pending expiration via a drop-box that was not being monitored.’ Mr. Coll wrote that ‘all external e-mail has been disrupted and external senders are receiving delivery failure notices.’ In general, the cost of renewing an Internet domain name is under $100.

The Post said that it had been able to renew its registration for washpost.com by midmorning, before any outsider had a chance to lay claim to it. But the disruption to the newspaper’s newsgathering efforts was significant enough that Post editors were advising reporters to set up temporary e-mail accounts using Yahoo and Hotmail….” [New York Times story]