BOTTLEROCKET is the Namecheap coupon code for July.

For a limited time (until end of today, 7/1), NICEDEAL will give a discount for domain renewals. Can be also used to extend the domain (i.e. can be used even if the domain isn’t expiring).

Here’s the Namecheap discount coupon for new domain registrations in June. If you enter junebugz it gives a 10% discount for the order.

I was registering some domains, and ran across a discount coupon code for Namecheap registrations. If you enter itsadeal it gives a 10% discount for the order.

The simple act of registering a domain opens yourself up to alot of privacy issues. In it’s basic form, it allows people to harvest your email address for spamming. It doesn’t take alot of imagination to figure out how much further hackers can take it (socially-engineered hacking, identity theft, etc).

As demonstration of how readily available this information is, let’s look at who owns wandering.com. You’ll see that it is registered to Murat in Istanbul with his Yahoo email address, phone and fax numbers. Compare that to wandering.net’s records. All my details are hidden behind NameCheap’s WhoisGuard. I’m sure that my information is not perfectly secure, but at least it’s an added layer of protection.

I always get similar privacy protection for all domains that I register. When I was with GoDaddy I used their “Domains By Proxy” service (an “added value” aka “charge you more money” service). NameCheap’s WhoisGuard is free (for now). It doesn’t matter who you register with, but I’d always recommend buying the privacy service (now you know why)!

Today, I found a cool domain name to register (for a future project). I decided to use namecheap.com for the registration. $7.99 (with coupon code) was pretty darn cheap for a .com registration, with free WhoisGuard protection.

While I was there, I finally bit the bullet and decided to transfer some of my current domains from Godaddy.com to namecheap.com. Turns out, it isn’t as easy as you might expect! Getting namecheap to initiate the transfer process was simple enough, but getting Godaddy to release the domains was a lot more obscure (can’t say I blame them, they’re losing a customer after all!). So here’s what I learnt…

• When initiating a domian transfer, the new registrar requires a EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol) code from the old registrar. Basically, the new registrar will queue the transfer until you (the owner) enters the EPP code.
• Finding the EPP code from Godaddy.com was rather obscure! But basically you need to login to Godaddy, open up the domain you want transferred, and on the bottom of the left colum will be a link that says “Authorization Code: Send by Email”. Clicking on the link will result in an email being sent to the domain owner (the Technical Contact I presume) with the EPP code.
• Enter that EPP code to the new registrar, and then the domain will get cut over.
• If you have Godaddy’s DomainsByProxy, make sure you cancel it. Otherwise you’ll give Godaddy another excuse to abort your domain transfer.

Once you know this “trick” it’s simple enough.
But just a quick google shows that there are many webmasters out there wondering why Godaddy doesn’t release domains and what they can do about it. Now I know, and hopefully so do you

James posted a really useful hint in the comments below. Basically, if you go to Godaddy’s Domain Management page, there’s a menu option for “Pending Transfers” on the left side. If you go in there, you can manually approve any pending transfers. That’ll reduce the transfer time from days to hours. Thanks for the great tip James!