SPECIALS
Recent Site Problems

By The Motley Fool Staff
March 12, 2002

Our apologies for the recent problems you may have had if you tried to access our site over the last few days. Here's the reason why. It was a boob on our part as we allowed the registration of the name "fool.co.uk" to lapse. The names on which all UK web addresses rest are administered by an organisation called Nominet. Each Internet Service Provider (ISP) keeps its own computer with a list of registered names (known as a Domain Name Server), but the definitive list is maintained by Nominet. Anyone can buy the right to use a name if it has not already been registered.  It is usually first come first served.  There have been other high profile cases where websites with the names of major companies or of celebrities have been grabbed by what are known as Cyber-squatters.

Nominet had suspended the fool.co.uk domain name from their database last Friday afternoon. Gradually this update filtered out across the web that the name was no longer registered and one by one ISPs stopped passing on requests to the Fool website. At least one reader had declared on another site that he was going to claim the name. Luckily we were first in the queue to re-register the name on Monday morning!

The problem also affected e-mails so if you've tried to contact us in the last few days you'll probably find that the e-mail bounced and so did not reach us.

The re-registration of the domain name took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning but it may take a little while for all ISPs to update their databases. This means you will probably see a trickle of users coming back to the site, rather than everybody coming back at the same time. It also means that, for a short time, you may be able to access some parts of the site but not others.

Once again, our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you. And welcome back!

PS If you missed yesterday's articles then just click here.