Testimony: Domain names fiasco

It's been a pleasure being part of the ToT tech team. We have a simple yet profound mission:

Exude excellence by priming the mission to be a tech-first mission

We have this team as our pacesetters 😎

TLDR

🔖 TLDR - Too long, don't read

Our spiritual father (otherwise referred to as PFA or Papa), officially Prophet Dr. Fred Akama recently announced the signing of Testimony TV and the team was tasked to park domains for that.

Unfortunately, I hit a snug and the ideal scenario was totally ruined until it got fixed!

The nitty-gritty

We found out that testimony.tv is already owned 🤕. So our next alternative:

Domains: testimony-tv.org/ testimony-tv.com

Great! 👍 We're in business.

I initiated payment and was out of there. 🏆

🤯 The fiasco

Not so fast. Moments later, I saw this:

Then this 🤯

Yes, you saw it right. All of a sudden, testimony-tv.org was no longer available!

😟 Devastation

I was devastated on two fronts:

• Professionally:

  I saw it as un-professionalism on my part. I had been a bit easy about the process, not quite prompt with the task. Then the payment gateway locked me out, meaning that I could not even buy the available testimony-tv.com

• Spiritually:

  First off, testimony.tv had required a price bargain which could have gone over $1500.

  

  I admit that's a quality domain. Maybe we'll get it in time. Besides, YouVersion acquired bible.com after several years.

  🧐 Did you know?

  The Bible app has been sponsored by one man since 2012! According to Wikipedia, he's the billionaire entrepreneur owner of Hobby Lobby (it might require you to use a VPN to connect), David Green). Talk about Kingdom Financing!

  Secondly, I felt this was the opposition winning! Frustrating the efforts of this ministry to secure an online presence.

So what do I do now? 🤔

The turnaround

Pardon me; I'm going to be a bit technical here.

Steps to Victory (You've gotta celebrate your wins, even the small ones) 🏆

🕵️ WHO IS lookup

After calming down and whispering a short "God intervene", I started with a WHOIS lookup. I hoped it would be public. Unfortunately, no data could be found by the registrar's service.

However, on the terminal, I got a clue: pir.org 🤨

🌐 ORG registry

I remembered some news about all the .org domains. The ORG registry was privatized late that previous year. Here's a comment I shared with my readers on this.

So what had that got to do with this? I don't know. It wasn't adding up because even with that fact, domain registrars can still sell .org domains.

On a hunch, read Holy Spirit's direction, I signed up for an account in a random domain registrar but left it at that, saying to myself, "Who am I kidding?"

I gave my mind a break from the concern.

📥 An email in the night

Sometimes I am a night owl, active at night, in the peace and quiet.

So I get this email:

I follow-up, and unbelievably, I can register the two domains 💪

Success

And it was a success, moreover cheaper 🕺

So now, while the Tech team is working on the page, here's the Testimony-TV) site. ✨

I liked the parking page they give once you purchase. So much that I just edited it to fit.

🧐 I had thought against sharing the domain registrar then I remembered: most techies will simply do a WHOIS lookup, so why go through the trouble. 🤷

Check them out: epik.com (They call themselves: the Swiss Bank of domains 🇨🇭)

For the record, I use multiple domain registrars. I try not to have brand loyalty with them.

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If this piqued your interest, this series probably will. I take readers through the steps of creating their own web presence from scratch.