Site glitch this morning; words of advice to other web site owners

Some of you might have noticed that our web site went off-line for a few hours earlier this morning.  That issue has now been resolved.

For the record, it was an issue with our web site domain registrar who WAS namecheap.com. They requested we verify our contact info after years of doing business with them. After we clicked verify in their control panel for our domain, they, without any warning or notice, took our site offline and posted a note our site would be available in "24-48 hours". Which could actually be up to 72 hours they way that the domain name system works.  Which in the e-commerce biz might as well be three years.

We don't know if that was a technical glitch or basic incompetence, but a quick web search revealed that the company has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau and did not respond to any of the BBB's inquiries. Two red flags is enough.

While we appreciate namecheap's efforts to get our service restored sooner, we're now in the process of transferring to a new domain registrar. The transition should be effective later today and there should be no further disruptions. We look forward to years of uninterrupted service.