Hi there,

I run the site https://osrsadvice.com, hosted here by forumotion. The original founder of the site left and placed me in charge a few years ago, with full/sole access to the founder's account. I've just renewed the domain name in December via the Administration Panel, and we have had this domain since 2014. Does this mean the domain https://osrsadvice.com safely belongs to my site?

I ask because someone contacted me yesterday to buy the domain, saying it's listed as "accepting offers" on GoDaddy. I checked GoDaddy and it does indeed ask for an offer, but I didn't list it for auction nor am I interested in selling it.

Thanks for your time.

Hello,

Don't be stressed about it, your domain won't be sold without your authorization assuming you pay for it.
So while you pay annual renew for package + domain, you domain will stay linked to your forum, and you can simply ignore this type of emails.

Moreover maybe it is not even a real mail from Godaddy but just a spam (While Godaddy really offers ability to do auctions for domain names)

Regards.

Hello @Bearmageddon,

I can just confirm what @chattigre already said : there is nothing to worry about. Godaddy sets it automatically when the domain expires, but absolutely no transaction can be made, as and so far your domain is renewed. And that is the case actually

Have a nice week-end,
Regards

Thanks everyone for your input!

I checked GoDaddy's auction site and my domain is definitely on there, but I'm glad to know it's nothing to worry about.
Brainstorming, the only explanation I can think of is either
A) the original founder was trying to quietly sell the domain without my knowledge after all these years, or
B) someone who wants to buy the domain made a fake auction to start the process.

In either case, I'm glad to know the domain is safe so long as I keep it active and renewed, thank you again

Thank you for your reply.

If at any moment the domain was about to expire, it is very probably was set by Godaddy automatically. Again, no worry about it Have a nice week-end.

Marked as solved

Problem solved & topic archived. Please read our forum rules: ESF General Rules

Thread reopened

Hello, back again!

I got in touch with GoDaddy directly to have them remove the listing so that I stop getting contacted, but they said that the person who listed it for sale provided proof that they own the domain.

I told them that's not possible because everything was handled through the portal here on forumotion, but they still insist the person posting it has proof.

"Osrsadvice.com's website content may be hosted at Forumotion, but the domain name itself is registered at GoDaddy.com. We have already confirmed that the person to whom osrsadvice.com is registered is definitely the person selling the domain and that they would be able to deliver it if someone made an offer that the seller accepted. We already have the proof of ownership we need because we can see the domain in the seller's account."

Anyone have some insight on what's going on here? If the domain is registered via the admin panel, aren't forumotion staff the only people who can see anything on the backend?

Thanks again!

Maybe the original founder of the forum?

I was wondering the same, but they handed over the founder account to me a few years ago and disappeared.

I sent GoDaddy a screenshot from the admin panel showing that I currently have the domain for the rest of the year, and they said I would have to upload a screenshot from the GoDaddy account that registered it, but doesn't forumotion take care of that?

I thought I paid for the custom osrsadvice.com domain as part of the advanced package and forumotion registered it via GoDaddy on my behalf, is that not the case? Maybe I've been mistaken for years :O

What is the forum's link without the domain name?

If I'm understanding correctly, it should be osrsadvice.forumotion.com

Was the renewal annually or monthly?

I pay for the advanced package monthly and renew the domain once per year, most recently in December. The admin panel says I have 297 days left.

How did this person contact you about the domain name?

They contacted me directly through Discord after joining my public discord server. When I told them it wasn't for sale, they asked if the sale listing on GoDaddy was incorrect then. That's when I found out it was listed on there.

So he/she was a member of the forum and noticed the domain name was listed?   If yes, this is weird.  Unless this person has a forum, why would he/she be looking at a domain name?

So my group/forum is named OSRS Advice. We give advice on the online game oldschool RuneScape. The person interested wants to buy it and make it into a gold selling site (very prevalent in this game, and is also against the game's rules).

So my guess was that they just looked up popular OSRS sites, found ours, and joined my forum/discord to make me an offer. They didn't have any contact with us prior to this though.

Could you post the link to GoDaddy showing the domain name listed?

Hello @Bearmageddon,

Yes, we have access to manage the osrsadvice.com domain on Godaddy, and the domain details are ours

What I don't understand at the moment is that this domain is not on the list of auctions belonging to Forumotion (that is because I can not just delete it directly from this list
). We will get in touch with Godaddy to discover what's the problem.

I'll get back to you as soon as I have some information from them.

Thanks Luzz!

And yes of course, here's the URL:

https://www.godaddy.com/domainsearch/find?checkAvail=1&domainToCheck=osrsadvice.com

What did GoDaddy say when you told them that you purchased the domain name in December for one year?

I also sent them a screenshot of the admin panel at the same time, showing I still have the domain in my control for at least another ~300 days, and they replied with:

Thank you for reaching back and for providing us with the screenshot!

Unfortunately we can not use the image as proof of ownership as it does not appear to be showing an account in the current registrar for the domain.

The current registrar for osrsadvice.com according to WHOIS databases is GoDaddy.

Please send us an image showing the domain in your GoDaddy account so we can verify that you are its registrant/owner.

Ok.  Let us wait until Luzz comes back and reply to this topic.

Yes the only ones that can fix this will be our head office and Luzz

Hello @Bearmageddon

It's solved now, the domain is no more on the Auction list.

I am really sorry for all the stress it caused to you.


Have a nice week,
Best regards