The original registration of sea of flowers as a domain name was effected through Domain Direct, which is affiliated with Tucows. I had signed up for a year. I didn’t buy a particularly expensive package, and I think their pricing was competitive, but I bought a bigger package than I needed. I thought I was going to host my web site and blog there, but they didn’t support server side scripts at that time. All I really needed was registration and DNS settings. Blogomania, where I host my sites, is not a registrar. Domain Direct extended my initial one year account to two years,, which put off the need to make any changes until early April. They started sending me renewal notices months ago. The renewal messages had links to pages on their site which gave me the option to renew my existing service or to upgrade. While Domain Direct offered simpler and cheaper services, there was no way to order them except by ordering a new account. Meanwhile, there are lots of services advertising domain registration service, with domain transfers priced at $10.00 or $15.00, with a year of service. I have a .ca domain and I need a CIRA Registrar, which narrowed the field.

I had checked out Webnames over the winter, but they weren’t offering the inexpensive renewals, and some of their pricing wasn’t competitive. However when I checked again in March, they had a $10.00 transfer campaign. Since they would have been my first choice based on their history and the sophistication of their own site, the choice was easy.
So, among the distractions of finding and moving into a new house, learning a new job and getting things like a new driver’s licence, automobile registration and insurance, I managed to avoid letting the domain registration lapse.