By Brent W. Hopkins

thegeniusfiles is proud to participate in "Move Your Domain Away from GoDaddy Day" in protest of the company's decision to support the Orwellian Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Censoring the Internet: it's a no-go, GoDaddy. Buh-bye.

Oh yes, the company has made an insincere about-face in an attempt to save face as over 70,000 customers leave en masse - but thegeniusfiles will file that one under "too little, too late." Suck it, GoDaddy. We The People don't give a GodDamn about your PR spin. That bitter flavor is the taste of SOPA in your mouth.

Want to join the GoDaddy exodus? Sure you do. Here's how to transfer from GoDaddy to DreamHost. Other domain registrars may vary slightly but the process is essentially the same.

(1)   Log in to GoDaddy & Unlock domain in web panel.  GoDaddy will send you an email to let you know.  You have to unlock the domain to allow it to be transferred out.

(2)    If you have GoDaddy’s privacy turned on, turn it off.  You should receive a “cancellation confirmation” for the cancelled domain privacy order. At this point you need to wait for DNS to propagate since DreamHost’s system will read the WhoIs to send a confirmation email to the domain owner.  If you leave privacy on or don’t wait long enough, good luck ever seeing that email. A good way to check whether the new Whois data has propogated is to run a whois on the domain you’re trying to transfer.  If the privacy details have been replaced by your actual contact details then you’re good.

(3)    Unlock the domain from the GoDaddy control panel

(4)    Request an authorization key from GoDaddy control panel.  (Some companies call this the “domain secret” code).  You should receive it by email within a minute or two.

(5)    Go to DreamHost control panel and click “transfer domains”.

(6)    Enter the domain and the auth key

(7)    Click transfer and pay the annual domain fee

(8)    The email address shown in the WhoIs entry will receive a confirmation email from DreamHost.  You will also see this email address in the DreamHost web panel – “Approval email sent to xxxx”.  If it was sent to the privacy company then you didn’t wait long enough for the WhoIs to propagate.  Click re-submit and try again.

(9)    Click the link in the email from DreamHost and accept the transfer.  You must click through and accept the transfer.

(10)    DreamHost will send you a confirmation of the transfer.

(11)   GoDaddy will send you a confirmation of the transfer - this notice gives a date by which you must respond if you *don't* want the domain transferred.  You can either wait for this date to pass (it's a few days) or log in to the GoDaddy domain panel and force the transfer by accepting it.

(12)    You should receive another cancellation notice from GoDaddy for the cancelled domain.

(13)    You should also receive a success notice from GoDaddy saying that the domain has transferred to another registrar.

(14)    You should now be able to log in to the DreamHost web panel, make sure they also think the domain has transferred (if you look under “Reg Transfer” it’s no longer in the pending list but is in the list of available Auth codes at the bottom of the page.

(15)    Go ahead and check privacy is back on with DreamHost (no extra charge for this from DreamHost – thanks guys!!!), finish any other setup of hosting or the domain if necessary and check the domain is working.
         

Bask in the warm satisfaction of knowing that you just hit GoDaddy where it hurts most - profits.