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Monday, September 16, 2013

AquamanShrine.Net: Why We're Here

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As many of you have noticed, the Shrine unceremoniously moved from it's long-held .com address to the current .net, causing all sorts of linking headaches for everyone involved.

Rest assured, it was not anything we wanted to happen. The short version is, usually I receive an email from Google asking me if I want to renew the Shrine's domain name for another year, and every year I do, and that's that. But this year, I received no such email; but I did receive a strangely-worded warning from "Google" that said my domain name would be cancelled. Knowing how impossible Google Customer Service is, I took these warnings (which, with their weird grammar and year-old copyright notices, looked like fakes) somewhat seriously, and I did a bunch of research to see if they were legit. Everything led me to think they were just password fishing exercises, so I ignored them.

Then, out of the blue, on Friday AquamanShrine.com went belly up. I immediately trying contacting Google to renew the domain, but every link they give you to do leads you to this page:

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...as you can see, this page is less than helpful.

I tried calling Google--which doesn't make it easy to do so--and after wading through endless menu prompts, I got a recording saying I needed an access code (something I never needed before), which I could get at a specific page on the web. I went to that page, followed the links, and it led me to: 
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I then spent the rest of Friday calling every Google number I could find, and every single one led me to a human who told me that, because they were not in the Google Apps department, there was nothing they could do for me. One of them did helpfully say there was an email they could send me that would help me renew the domain name. After requesting this email from three separate Google reps (the first two said they would send it, but never did), I got it, followed the links in it, and was sent to:
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At this point, I was starting to lose what was left my of my fragile mind, having found myself in this Kafka-esque maze of phone calls and Google links that lead to nowhere. There was simply no human to talk to that could do anything about this dead page that I kept getting routed to.

After mentioning this on Facebook, F.O.A.M. member J. David Weter stepped up and offered to help me go get AquamanShrine.net, and migrate the whole site over to there. This was the best of nothing but bad options, so that's what we did, and why we're here.

I know that the move messes up a lot of the links, and myriad other things that damages the site's functionality. But I'm asking everyone to bear with us, as we continue to work on getting The Aquaman Shrine back up to full speed.

8 comments:

Earth 2 Chris said...

Well, I hope you get things worked out Rob. But you have to admit, Aquaman.Net is somewhat more appropriate!

Chris

Wings1295 said...

Sorry about all that, Rob. Hate customer service that just sucks! Google seems to have lost their way, sadly. Long live AquamanShrine.net!

Joseph Brian Scott said...

Oh my word! How nightmarish. Makes me want to have nothing to do with the internet ever again. (But I probably will.)

Truly sorry you had to go through this. I remember the convo on your FB [age about whether or not you should ignore the Google suspected-fishing thing, and how the consensus of several very experienced, web-savvy opinions was to fuhgeddaboutit. Man, that turns my whole world upside down; I don't know WHAT I'd have done if I'd been in your aquashoes.

Well, the Shrine is still operative and we all still get to enjoy it, so I guess that's the important thing. I hope "Hey Kids! Comics!" makes you a million dollars.

Russell said...

Welcome back, buddy! You scared me there for a few minutes. Don't do that again, okay? ;-)

Unknown said...

Thanks for going through all that trouble for all your fellow Aquaman fans!

Anthony said...

Nice to see things fixed. Didn't know one could register URLs via Google. Think I'll stick with someone else for my site's domain... :-)

Lucien Desar said...

I am so sorry you had to go through that ordeal Rob. I am sure you were elated by your book coming out but then seriously annoyed that you had domain issues. Hope google gets your domain back. I really appreciate all the time and effort you bring in the site. It brings me hours of happiness in the week!

Shellhead said...

Bummer. It took me a while to find you again. Perhaps you should email everybody if you have such a list somewhere. Plenty of FOAMers are probably concerned.