Hi every one,

If you were redirected while surfing my blog pages to an unfamiliar site (example below) yesterday, I like to apologies. This is due to advertlets.com domain name expired and they will still having the same problem resolving their domain name for the next 24 – 48 hours because Advertlets.com renew their domain one day after the domain name expired. I have deleted off some of their link from my blog to avoid my blog being hi-jacked to display the expired domain name announcement + illegal ads!

This whole week seem a bad week for me. My house phone was down from Tuesday – Friday, to make the whole thing more complicated my house Streamyx DSL line was down even after my house phone line was fix on Friday. I have to pay extra using 3G internet connection to surf online. Not to mention my “lengthy, waste time & money” conversation with TM. Does TM hiring a bunch of people that get a job done or make the situation worse? How do you feel when you were on hold for 15min and when it get connected some one singing happily at the background?

Here are few tips to all domain name owner! Keeping your domain name live and healthy is important for your website. You may risk losing customers & readers and importantly, money! There are no good excuses for you to renew your domain name on the last minutes or on the last day it self.

• Renew your domain name early, DON’T do it last minutes or face DNS resolving issues and it may takes up to 24 – 48 hours. Renewing your domain name last minutes may get your domain name hi-jacked by domain name hunter. This is true when your domain is not under your full control/ownership. So you got to be careful not to let your domain name expired. Trust me on this, I have got experience on this which lead us (our IRC network) to change domain name for 4 times.
• Don’t ever get FREE or CHEAP domain name, sounds good but don’t! You risk losing ownership to the domain name in the long run.
• Some good registrar may email you one month in advance requesting domain name renewal. You can always WHOIS on your own domain name to verify the validity of your domain name.
• Take full control of your own domain name! Registrant, Administrative, Technical…
• Add more NS (name server) to your domain name. The more location your domain name were hosted, the better! Most Malaysian NS practices 2 set but this 2 set of NS, I believe is from the same location. Put for fun? Hehehehe I’m not so sure…
• Renew up to ten years if you wish! why not? it’s not that expensive anyway if you are running dot com business.

Advertlets.com, Thanks you!

*Update 8th January 2008*
Josh Lim of Advertlets.com sends “We’re Sorry” mail to all bloggers. I felt sorry for Josh too… anyway, lesson learned. This small-but-bad-mistake is a hard way to learned. Success only comes after failing, Josh Lim will definitely be very successful in the future provided he don’t give up.

from “Josh Lim @ Advertlets”

Hi,

This is Josh Lim here from Advertlets. This message is sent out to all bloggers that have registered with Advertlets in our key markets of Malaysia & Singapore.

Firstly, we admit. We made an error in judgment, and we did not intend for this to happen. And we are very sorry that it did, and would like to apologize for everyone affected.

Some small mistakes are resolved easily, and affect a few. And some mistakes, however small, can affect millions.

Most of you are probably disappointed, confused or angry at the recent downtime that has happened, that has cut off access to your blogs. Over the past few days, we have been doing everything we can to restore service, as well as answering e-mails, phone calls, smses, media interviews, and support requests.

Its hard to apologize to more than 15,000 members, and this e-mail was hard to type, but undoubtedly necessary. And first, I’ll probably be best to start by answering questions you might have:

What happened?
==============
A complication in the renewal process caused the Advertlets.com domain to expire, and caused issues for bloggers with our ads installed, which made their blogs redirect to a placeholder page. It was not our intent to do so. Advertlets.com blog users were unable to login to their Advertlets accounts and access the website as well.

How many did it affect?
=======================
According to our statistics, it affected 30-65% of traffic to our network over the past 2 days. On most days, we experience between 3-4 million ad impressions per day. The viewers of most blogs were affected in some way, depending on the nature of how DNS settings would resolve in different countries and ISPs. Some would resolve faster, some would not, which caused varying experiences for viewers in different places.

What can I do to resolve the problem?
=====================================
You can follow some troubleshooting steps listed at http://advertlets.blogspot.com, a site temporarily set up to assist in
this issue. Or, you can remove your code for the time being, and we will notify you when it has been fully resolved.

Whose fault is it?
==================
Ours. The short answer is that it is our fault. The longer answer is that we tried everything we could as soon as we knew, however, some uncontactable and uncooperative parties made it harder. Nevertheless, the blame lies with us, and we will take full responsibility for it, and to resolve it.

What will happen to my current earnings?
========================================
Your current earnings will be retained within the system, and we will continue to serve paid ads for you to continue to earn in future.

If I choose to continue with Advertlets, can I be assured that this will never happen again? And how do you intend to compensate us for the error?
=======================================================================
The domain has also been renewed, and we will make sure that this can never happen again. We resolve to do better in future, and have more failsafe options available. A financial compensation plan is being worked out, and will be announced on after we have assessed the full situation.

Will we be continuing operations?
=================================
Yes. Paid ads are beginning to be served through the system again in available locations.

Where is service available as of now? How soon until everything is okay?
=======================================================================
We’ve received reports that most of the DNS has successfully resolved for the following ISPs:

– Jaring (Malaysia)
– TMNet (Malaysia)
– Starhub Maxonline (Singapore)
– PT Telkom (Indonesia)

Service is continuing to be restored throughout the rest of Asia and the world and all service should be fully restored in less than 12
hours.

Its heartening that some have been of great assistance to us in this difficult time, providing us with service updates from their area as well as moral support. But to those that were frustrated, we understand your frustration, and it frustrates us even more to have
been the source of it. All in all, we are still in awe as to how passionate all of you are.

And how many people have chosen to make Advertlets part of their channel of expression. It is our hope that you can continue to do so. Service is close to being 100% restored, and we will be notifying all when service is fully functional, to assist you with your decision on the continued use of our services. Your impressions are your votes. And if you can forgive us, we will make sure your trust is never again misplaced.

We will be making some personnel changes and new additions to ensure that everything – support, ad loading time, code, and more run smoothly in future. Major upgrades to the system are due in February, in the form of Advertlets 2.0 with new ad formats, referrals, earning graphs, social features, and traffic generation facilities. And of course morecontests, advertising revenue and sponsored post opportunities.

We hope that in the next few days we can prove ourselves again to you, nevertheless, our redemption will be in your hands. Once again, we apologize.

Regards,
– –
Josh Lim
On behalf of all at Advertlets.com