Which is to say, I have almost no idea wtf I'm doing or how to do it or how to identify when I've shot myself in the foot. Long story short: several years ago I registered a domain through Google, and two years ago the auto renew failed. I didn't renew it, and then I made it worse. Spoiler: Long story longer I used the domain for playing a tiny bit with html, but mostly just to reserve te domain of my favorite username. Nothing much of worth, and as one of my roommates pointed out, two years ago, "well, it's not like you're using it for much." That's what she said when I told her that the auto payment for renewing the domain's registration had failed, and that I didn't notice for so long that my domain expired. It would have cost me $95.17 to redeem and renew the domain through the service I had gotten it, and I believed that anyother would keep the domain but lose the info. I was in a poor place emotionally and financially, and I was swayed by her words, probably more than she intended. What am I using it for? Who am I kidding? I'm not learning anything relevant to using this for anything, I'm not doing art, I'm hardly keeping in touch with family or friends... Hell, I'm barely making enough money to get by, I don't have the energy to invest in this. Fuck it. I might as well save $10 a year, no one else will want it. At the time, my primary roleplaying and job hunting email addresses were through that domain. I had only realized something was wrong when I realized I hadn't gotten any emails related to my rp games in a few months. Even though the domain was expired, it still gave me the ability to log in and access their archives. That was enough. I set up new @gmail addresses and prepared to switch important things over. The problem is, somehow, and to this day I remember where I was standing but not what the hell I clicked... Somehow I did something, somehow, to erase the archive of the job-related email. And somehow that email address was the primary email for the domain registration, as well as a few other things. I made a huge headache for myself and had to remind myself for months afterwards not to blame my friend for recommending the domain die, because what the hell did she know about the particulars or the bizarre loophole I got myself into? See, in order to retrieve the archives, I needed to be able to receive a confirmation code, and to get the confirmation I needed to access either access the domain or give them my sign up information... Which I never backed up, for reasons (???). I had always been able to just go to my email to get it. IN SHORT, by doing this I locked myself out of a lot of important things and used it as another reason to hate myself for basically 20 months. This last week I was at my Dad's, getting out of my own headspace and clutter and associations of guilt/shame to something approximating good. So I decided to flip off the past and reclaim my domain. GoDaddy is obnoxious but popular, and had some neat thing where the first year was $0.99. I snagged two years and felt that reserved it long enough to see if I would do something different this time. Now I'm working with Google Apps to confirm to it that I'm the domain owner, to see what, if any, of the old stuff I can reclaim. Apparently I do this by creating a CNAME. So after a few minutes of going wtf and clicking FAQs, I conclude it wants me to set up a NameServer that directs from a specific page.domain.com (host) to direct instead to google (points to), and somehow Google Apps uses this to confirm I own the domain and everybody's happy. I thought I figured it out, And I set it to go through after half an hour. It's been 2 And I have a theory why. See, GoDaddy? Kiiiiinda not great. Everything I try to do, it offers paid services to do them. And... Apparently hosting the site isn't part of their domain register service. So I own the domain, but without a host to hold the website, there's nothing but a blank white page. Ouch. Idek how to proceed here. I guess what I'm asking is, is anyone familiar with registering domains through GoDaddy? If so, does it only register the domain, but hosting is a separate service? Do I have to decide whether to pay for their hosting or look elsewhere? It is 1am and I'm just sorta staring ahead, puzzled, frustrated, and a little embarrassed.
