Domain

You rent your domain by the year. If a renewal fails, because auto-renew is off or the card on file expired, the site and the email on the domain stop working, and after a while someone else can register it. This check shows a problem on the site weeks before that happens.

What WP Moo looks at

When the domain expires.
Whether the domain is on hold or being deleted, which switches off the site and the email.
Which registrar it's with, so you know where to renew.

We read it once a day from the registry itself, over RDAP, the public successor of WHOIS. No registrar account needed. If the registry can't be read for a while, we keep using what it told us last.

What the problems mean

Domain expires in … Urgent Renew the domain now at your registrar, and check that the payment details there are still valid.

Domain has expired Urgent Renew the domain at your registrar right away. Renewed it already? Press Run checks on the site overview to read the registry again, or update the date you entered in Checks & pages.

Domain is on hold at the registry Urgent Contact your registrar and ask why the domain is on hold.

Domain expires in … Important Check at your registrar that the domain renews, or renew it now.

We can't read the domain's registration Info Nothing yet, we keep asking every day. If it lasts, enter the expiry date yourself in Checks & pages.

Out of the box: Urgent within 14 days of expiry or when the domain expired or is on hold · Important within 30 days · Info when the registry can't be read for 3 days. What each priority means: Problem priority.

Domains without an expiry date

A .nl or .de domain has no expiry date at the registry. It stays registered until your registrar cancels it, so the date you renew on is part of your contract with the registrar, not something anyone can look up. The .eu and .be registries do keep a date but don't publish it. A few other registries, like .at and .ch, don't share one either. For these domains we can't warn you weeks ahead on our own.

So when you add a site on one of them, "Don't watch the domain" is picked for you. Want a warning before the renewal? Choose "I'll enter the date" and fill in the date from your registrar's invoice or control panel. You can change it later in Checks & pages. If the registry couldn't be read while you added the site, the check stays on and its card in Checks & pages asks for the date once it knows. Once a date you entered passes, we look up the site's address: if the domain still works, it was most likely renewed and we ask for the new date (a Notice problem, "Did the domain renew? Enter the new date"); if not, it has expired.

While the check is on, we also see a cancelled domain on a registry that shares its status, like .nl. The .eu and .be registries don't, so there you only find out when the date you entered passes or the site goes down. A cancelled .nl domain goes into quarantine for 40 days: the site and the email stop working right away, and until the quarantine ends you can get the domain back through any registrar, not only the one that cancelled it. We show that as an Urgent problem: the domain is on hold at the registry. With the check off, you still hear about it, because the site goes down.

How to fix it

Log in at your registrar, the company you pay for the domain. The Domain card in Checks & pages names it when the registry publishes it.
Renew the domain, or check that auto-renew is on and the payment details are still valid.
Is the domain on hold? Ask your registrar why. It usually follows an unpaid renewal, missing owner details or a complaint.

WP Moo picks up the new date on its next daily check, or right away when you press Run checks on the site overview. Entered the date yourself? Update the expiry date in Checks & pages.

For your developer

The check asks the registry's RDAP server, from the IANA bootstrap file plus a few registries it leaves out, about the domain the main host belongs to (www left off). It reads the expiration event, the status list and the registrar entity's name, and caches the answer for just under a day. To see the same thing:

curl -sL https://rdap.org/domain/example.com | jq '.events, .status'

rdap.org only knows the registries in the IANA file. For .de, ask the registry itself:

curl -s https://rdap.denic.de/domain/example.de | jq '.events, .status'

On hold means a status of client hold, server hold, inactive, redemption period or pending delete. SIDN shows a .nl domain in quarantine as pending delete, with a deletion event and an expiration event 40 days later, and no name servers. That expiration date counts as the expiry date, so with the check on automatic a quarantined domain also shows "Domain expires in" problems as it runs out. An entered date counts as the end of that day in UTC; once it passes, an A and AAAA lookup of the main host decides between asking for a new date and expired: any address means the domain still works.

A failed registry lookup still judges the last registration and becomes an Info problem of its own from the third day (not when you entered the date yourself). A registry that says it doesn't know the domain counts as a failed lookup too. A registry date that passes during a failed lookup stays "expires in less than a day" until the third day, since the domain was most likely renewed; only then is it called expired. A failed A lookup, or a failed AAAA lookup when there are no A records, makes the run "couldn't check".

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