I have way too many domain names…  Just with the ones I could remember, my current count is around 23…

Last night, I decided it was time to write something basic for managing them better.  I’m not worried about things like response-time, uptime, etc.  Really, the only thing I care about is the expiration dates on them.. and, maybe, having some way to make sure they didn’t somehow get transferred away from me.

Currently, my app is pretty small and simple.  It reads a list of domains from a text file.  This list is a combination of sites that belong to me and sites I’d like to have someday.  Eventually, I’ll include a way of distinguishing the two.  Upon loading, it queries the appropriate whois server (based on the domain extension) and parses out the expiration date.  From there, it calculates how long until I need to renew.  If there are any domains expiring soon, it will highlight them and pop up to show me the list. Otherwise, it just quietly closes.

My next change will be to store the expiration dates along with the domain name.  Only when it starts getting close to the expected expiration date (or the user requests it) will this stored value be refreshed.  If the last time I queried the domain, it told me that it expires on, say, 5/3/2008, I don’t have any need for checking that value on subsequent program loads… at least not until, say, 4/15/2008…  This will help keep the program execution time down and will let it focus only on stuff that is likely to have its information changed soon…

Also, I may add in something for expired domains… so if one that I’m tracking happens to have its registration lapse, I can have a quick way of registering it (whether through just a link to a registration site or something more convenient like an automated registration script).