Tom_jones18Cher.com was down for a few days and it didn’t seem to cause much of a fruckus on the two yahoo groups I frequent. This struck me as odd because I thought fans used the forums heavily…however, maybe the forums stayed up. I didn’t check. I wasn’t in the mood to get sideswiped by some d.r.a.m.a.

But the site being down struck me as interesting, especially the error message I was getting that the domain name had expired. Bizarre because a search of Whois verified the domain was safe as a peach.

One of my consulting jobs has educated me on domain name issues of the day along with other policies and politics regarding the running of the Internet. While the site was down I hoped the domain name wasn’t dismantled by a scandal occurring right now with Registerfly. The company, a domain name registrar, failed to renew customers’ paid-for domain name renewals and is preventing them from rescuing their domain names to a more stable and customer-service-friendly registrar. If you have a domain name that, at some point, may need rescuing, read this article on the whole story and how to protect your domain name. The situation is a serious one – many business’ web sites have gone off-web as a result, allegedly ruining their businesses and livelihoods.

Yesterday I noticed that Cher.com was back up, but sadly with the same old out-dated news and shtick. So little I missed ye, Cher.com. I know. I know. With fans like me, who needs fanemies?

One of the most interesting, usable artist sites to me has been www.tomjones.com. It always changes, experiments with technology and has just the right combo of distance to friendliness that a fan site requires. Plus, right now it’s full of TJ looking pretty freakin sweaty and hot.