We have already had over 100 votes in the past 3 days alone! Voting will remain open until September 15th, so take a moment and vote for your favorite contestant by visiting the Official Summer Website Giveaway page below:

www.capefeardesign.com/giveaway

WILMINGTON, N.C. – Cape Fear Design is announcing their First Annual Summer Website Giveaway, in which one lucky business or organization will receive a free website and hosting services valued at over $2,000.

Designed to recognize and promote local businesses and organizations, the Summer Website Giveaway will award the winner with a custom-built website and one year free support, training and hosting.

To participate, individuals must fill out the official entry form found on the company’s website (www.capefeardesign.com/giveaway), and describe how the free website will help their local business or organization further its mission. Nominations for the giveaway must be received by 11:59 P.M. on Friday, August 27, 2010. An independent judging panel will then select five semi-finalists and share their stories on our website.

Community members will then be given the opportunity to cast votes for their favorite contestant based on how they believe the free website will benefit each business or organization. Voting will be open from Wednesday, September 1, 2010 until Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 11:59:59 P.M.
The Summer Website Giveaway winner will be notified and announced on Cape Fear Design’s website Friday, September 17, 2010.

If you need additional information regarding The Summer Website Giveaway, please call Cape Fear Design at (910) 300-9467, send an email to info@capefeardesign.com, or visit our website, www.capefeardesign.com.

Contact:
Brett Neville
President
Cape Fear Design
Email: brett@capefeardesign.com
Phone: (910) 300-9467

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To Participate, individuals must fill out the official entry form and describe how the FREE Website will help their local business or organization further its mission. Nominations must be received by 11:59:59 P.M. (EST) on Friday, August 27, 2010. Our judging panel will then select five semi-finalists and share their stories on our website. You, the community, will then be given the opportunity to cast a vote for your favorite contestant based on how they believe the FREE Website will benefit their business or organization. Voting will be open from Wednesday, September 1, 2010 until Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 11:59:59 P.M. (EST). The Summer Website Giveaway winner will be notified and announced on our website Friday, September 17, 2010.

Good luck, and thank you for participating our First Annual Summer Website Giveaway!

What can you do to prevent this problem? Take 5 minutes out of your day to create a file with all the important information regarding your domain. The file should contain not only contact info used to register the domain, but also the Customer ID number, passwords, and PIN numbers associated with the account. Make sure to include when the domain was purchased, last renewed and for how long. Do yourself a favor and create a “hard copy” of this file to prevent loss of information resulting from a computer crash.

When a domain is pending expiration, companies like GoDaddy will begin sending out emails, and notices in the mail to remind you to renew the domain as far out as 90 days prior to the expiration date. This is another reason it is important to keep your domain’s whois information up to date, so that you can receive these notices. What happens when your domain expires? Most companies will take your site down, and put up a holding page or sorts to let you know that the domain is “parked”. An embarrassing example of this could be seen last week when visiting Brunswick County’s Electric company, BEMC.org. See the image below of a BEMC.org’s expired website:

A worse case scenario is that your domain expires, the grace period is over, and someone purchases your domain out from under you. Your only option at this point is to try to buy your domain back, which usually comes at a ridiculous price. For example, The George W. Bush library website expired and a NC based web development company paid less than $10 for the www.georgewbushlibrary.com domain name – and sold it back for $35,000 to the library’s contracted Web developers, Yuma Solutions, who had accidentally let it expire. Don’t let this happen to you.

Do yourself a favor and make yourself the website information file mentioned above, and keep track of your website’s expiration date. You’ll thank us later!

We look forward to working with you!

Contact us today for more information!