Surratt Website

[L Verge]

As many of you know, the Surratt website has experienced a great deal of problems over the past few months. It can all be blamed on a company that sells domain names.

We have owned the rights to http://www.surratt.org since 1998. We have renewed that name in five-year cycles since then. However, this year, our renewal notices were e-mailed to our first webmistress -- who has been dead for a number of years. No written notice was ever sent via USPS to our address that appears on their records.

When we discovered that the site had been taken down about 6-8 weeks ago, we received the worst run-around from the company that you would ever believe. Suffice to say that we talked to reps in every state of the Union as well as India because it is a company that has no centrally located customer service component.

Several weeks ago, Roger warned me that our domain name might be up for sale. We checked, and they assured us that they hold the names for 4-5 months before releasing it. Guess what - they lied! Our domain name has already been sold to a gentleman in Mexico (who is, no doubt, hoping that he can resell it to someone for hundreds or thousands of dollars). http://www.surratt.org is no longer a site for the Surratt House Museum or the Surratt Society.

However, we have now registered and paid for a new domain name. Hopefully, within the week, one can type in http://www.surrattmuseum.com and be directed to our old site. We are leaving that up while we continue to build a new site with the help of Life Member Rick Mundy. That project has been on hold since the troubles began.

I have to praise my staff member who has worked through all of this (because the rest of us are computer illiterate). Some of you know Julie Cowdery as our tech wiz during the conferences. In between handling over 3500 school children this year at the museum and sundry other things, Julie has been the sole problem solver on this. If I could clone her at least three times, I would be one ecstatic museum director.

Keep your fingers, toes, knees, and eyes crossed that everything runs smoothly from now on.