Let me start off by saying that I know absolutely nothing about web sites. I am an office manager for a church. We had a guy who was in charge of our site and he quit. That left me to try to figure out how to handle things until we hired someone new. I figured out that we were hosted by Hostway and how to pay them, but I didn't know you had to renew your domain name. By the time I figured this out it had expired. I contacted Hostway and they told me that I could go to who.is to see who had the name. At the time it was Name.net. I contacted them and they said they didn't have our name. I went back to who.is and sure enough the name was available again. So I contacted Hostway and they said they'd handle it. They lied. 3 days after that another company got the name, Name.com. The contact info is Protected Domain Services, and I’ve tried to contact them, but no luck. I'm not sure why anyone would want to buy our name. We are the only church with this name. If it's someone who wants us to pay them a wad of money, then fine, we will, but I don't know how to even find out if that's what they want. I am at a loss here. Any help you could give me would be much appreciated. Thanks.

It's difficult to work out exactly what happened without having more details... but the most likely explanation is that your domain was snatched up by a "domain taster", he dropped it, then it was snatched up by another domain taster... who may or may not also drop it in due course.

As you have found out the hard way, domain names need to be renewed - once you've let your domain name expire it's up for grabs.

A lot of people now register second-hand domain names (i.e., domain names that have been dropped by others) in the hope of catching the traffic that went to the previous web site and making money from it. This seems to have happened with your domain.

It is possible to register domains for a limited number of days and then drop them without incurring any charges - and a lot of people do this now just to test the water and see how much traffic they get. From what you are saying this appears to have happened with your domain - one person registered it, then dropped it, now somebody else has got it.

Hopefully that "somebody else" will drop it too - and when they do you have to make sure you get in there before anybody else does, and the best way to do this is to place a backorder with a company that specialises in backordering domains, such as Snapnames.

If that doesn't work, and if you are unable to contact the person who has your domain, then one more possibility might be to file a dispute (you would need to get legal advice on this!), but this would cost you a lot of money and may not succeed.

Any help you could give me would be much appreciated.

Lubeca pretty much answered your query. I'll just add the following:

1. Don't look up the domain name on your browser.

2. Don't contact any further the one listed on the domain name's record.

3. Tell everyone else you know to do #1 and #2 if they're looking it up online.

Although you've tried to contact the domain's registered holder about it, give it about 120 hours (5 days) from when it was first taken. With luck and prayer (no pun intended), it might...might...become available by then.

If it does, be ready to register it on the spot. No distractions.

If it's still registered after more than 120 hours, either seek legal advice or register another domain name instead. Make the best out of it.

Thanks for your help! Hopefully it will be available again. If not I guess we're getting a new domain. Thanks again.

as people of faith we must believe there is a purpose to everything. maybe God is using this difficulty to teach you something that will benefit you and your church later on. I pray for you and the return of your domain. God Bless You.

Nice words there Peez ;)