How to buy a domain name: new, taken or expired
Every name you want is free, taken, or about to drop, and each one needs a different playbook. The costly mistake is the same in all three.
How to check when a domain expires (and which date to trust)
Look up any domain's expiration date in seconds, even a private one. Plus why the public date can jump a year ahead before anyone pays.
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Archive ›How to buy a domain name: new, taken or expired
Every name you want is free, taken, or about to drop, and each one needs a different playbook. The costly mistake is the same in all three.
How to check when a domain expires (and which date to trust)
Look up any domain’s expiration date in seconds, even a private one. Plus why the public date can jump a year ahead before anyone pays.
The tools I open every day to run a portfolio of websites
The short list of tools I use every day to keep a portfolio of websites found, visited, up, and planned.
From parked domain to live site: my build stack in 2026
Most of my domains sit parked until I build on one. Here’s the hosting, theme, plugins, SEO tools, and AI I use when a domain becomes a site.
Domain leasing and lease-to-own: worth it for sellers?
He stopped paying and didn’t notice until his website went down. What lease-to-own on Afternic costs both sides, and the step sellers forget.
Domain name valuation: the framework I actually use
How I value a domain name: extension, length, the likely buyer, comparable sales, demand signals, trademarks, and the holding-cost math appraisal tools skip.
How to find who owns a domain (and reach them when WHOIS is private)
Most WHOIS records hide the owner now. Here’s what a lookup still shows, how each big registrar passes your message on, and what GoDaddy’s form actually sends.
Can you transfer an expired domain? Yes, but don’t renew it first
Yes, you can transfer a domain after it expires. Here’s how, the renewal trap to avoid, and what to do when a registrar won’t hand over the auth code.
If Google can answer it, nobody clicks: what my sites’ data shows
Data from 11 of my sites shows a simple pattern: if Google can answer the question itself, people don’t click. If they need the actual thing, they still do.
The WordPress plugins I install on every site, and the ones I removed
The lean set of WordPress plugins I install on every site: what each one does, what I removed, and what I don’t need a plugin for at all.