Fact Friday #4: Domain Expiry

Hey everyone,

Not many people know that on June 20th 2011, Club Penguin was down and over 12 million people couldn’t log in. However, this was because their domain expired. A domain is basically a website’s address (URL), and needs to be renewed every couple of years. Disney managed to forget to do this despite the fact they got a week of warning from the company.

Instead of the normal greeting screen, you would get this if you tried to visit Club Penguin at that time.

Fortunately, Disney renewed the domain a day after and gave everyone affected by the problem a membership and/or 10,000 coins if they were contacted by a parent of the account holder. This is believed to be the reason why membership prices went up only a few days after Disney handed out their memberships.

An undisclosed number of people were also laid off after this, but the reason is not fully confirmed. Did you learn something new today?

Waddle on!