*update* - gravatar.com is back up now! Thanks to Pauly D for informing me.
*update* - Thanks to Alan who took the initiative and researched the domains registrar and went ahead and renewed the domain name himself. We need more people like that in the world :-)
So I just noticed today that gravatar’s have been down. Apparently there is something going on with thier domain name as you can see here …
Domain Name: GRAVATAR.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.tucows.com
Name Server: NS3.POLARPHASE.COM
Name Server: NS4.POLARPHASE.COM
Status: REGISTRAR-HOLD
Updated Date: 16-jul-2005
Creation Date: 15-jul-2004
Expiration Date: 15-jul-2006
It is on Registrar-Hold, which basically means it wasn’t renewed and it expired on the 15th of July, 2005 and now the Registrar has control over it and probably wants alot of money to get it off of Registrar-Hold status as that is what they do, although I don’t know either way. The good news is there is afix for this problem! All you need to do is edit your gravatar.php plugin file and change “www.gravatar.com” to “64.124.231.223″ … in addition to that you can also go ahead and put that IP in your hosts file so that gravatar.com will resolve for all those sites out there that have not updated thier plugin file.
Linux users can simply open up /etc/hosts and add this line
64.124.231.223 gravatar.com
This also works for any UNIX operating systems including Mac OS X, you will need admin access to edit the file though.
For windows users the location of your hosts file depends on which version you have, however the files work the same so you can add the line above to your hosts file and it will work.
Windows XP - c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\
Windows 2000 - c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\
Windows 95/98/ME - c:\windows\
Now lets all do the internet a favor and anywhere you see a site with gravatar’s that don’t work, send them this link and have them fix it so we can all have the beauty that is gravatars back and working until the domain name issues can get resolved.
It’s back up, effective now.
LOL, the registrar actually wanted the princely sum of $8.95 and they didn’t care who paid it :-)
Thats a good registrar then, I used to work for a hosting company and when domains would get to registrar hold we would charge around $150 to get it back for the customer.
it was http://www.web.com. I didn’t particularly like their site or the process, they kept trying to sell me additional services every step of the way.