All Freenom .ga domains are taken down by registry

[Admin]

Many of you are using free .ga domains provided by Freenom. If you are using using a .ga domain, you may notice that the domain is down right now.

What happened?

The reason for this is that ANINF, the National Agency for Digital Infrastructure and Frequencies of the Gabonese Republic, is reclaiming ownership of the .ga extension, and will be managed by the French registry Afnic.

They also wrote that:

As part of this switch-over operation, several million domain names will be deleted as the previous operator has not provided the data that concern them.

The statement seems to imply that ALL registrations have been dropped, including all free registrations. The statement makes it clear that they have no intent to allow free registrations again, and instead want to focus on customers who want to use the domains in relation to Gabon. Registration services will be resumed at some point and the domains will be available for anyone to purchase.

In other words: all free .ga domains are gone and you won’t get them back (unless you buy the domain, presumably).

What does this mean for InfinityFree users?

Most if not all .ga sites hosted with InfinityFree will be down, as well as .ga sites hosted by other providers. This is done by the government of Gabon, and not something you or we have any control over.

If you are looking for a way to make your site public for free, we recommend using a free subdomain instead.

Other Freenom extensions

Freenom is in hot water right now. New registrations have been disabled since March, primarily due to a law suit from Meta. The company is also under investigation by the Court of Amsterdam since late last year due to a dispute with an investor, and in general doesn’t appear to have been profitable since 2016. Meanwhile, the contracts for many of the domain extensions they manage are coming up, and it is possible that Freenom may lose control of other extensions (like .ml, .cf and .gq) as well, which may result in free domains getting deleted.

Therefore, we recommend that everyone who currently is using a Freenom domain should prepare for the event that domains with their other extensions may be lost as well.

Source

ga-domain-names-soon-to-return-to-Gabonese-management-1.pdf

[Jasonchan]

My website deployed with the Freenom.ga domain, this moments my site can’t be accessed. How to change an available website domain, please tell me the approach.

[KangJL]

@Jasonchan

How to change an available website domain

1. Get a domain/subdomain
2. Add it to hosting account.
3. Migrate from old website

How to migrate your website to InfinityFree

If your website doesn’t use MySQL databases, moving your site is very easy. Simply upload all your files to the ‘htdocs’ folder on your hosting account with FTP or a file manager. If you have a PHP based website, check if it has any configuration files where a domain name or file path needs to be set. Update these values as required. If your website is using MySQL databases, you need to move the database contents as well and update the configuration of your website to use the database: Backup…

[Bhat123]

@KangJL Can you Help me with the same Plz. I had .ga domain also but now that it is shut down… I also want new domain so i tried the subdomain on infinityfree but the problem is that for my website to work it needs cloudflare (when i used .ga domains i changed the name servers easily). So how can i change the nameservers on the subdomain. If possible if not tell me an alternative to link my website (new subdomain) to cloudflare… or any other alternative you have… I need it ASAP

[KangJL]

@Bhat123

If possible if not tell me an alternative to link my website (new subdomain) to cloudflare

Not possible for free subdomain

@Bhat123

any other alternative you have

Read this thread

Freenom Discussion

Freenom got sued and have ceased operations. IMPORTANT NOTICE: Because of technical issues the Freenom application for new registrations is temporarily out-of-order. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience. We are working on a solution and hope to resume operations shortly. Thank you for your understanding.

[Admin]

A bit of news about this, I’ve heard from one person who bought their .ga domain that it got reactivated. I have no idea how the transfer of the domain will go from here, but at least it seems that those who bought their domains get to keep it.

It seems that free domain users will have to purchase their domain names if they want to keep using the name. There is a list of accredited registrars on the registry website: Migration of the .ga top-level domain

[Oxy]

I often see that the condition for registration is this:

.ga domains are open to natural and legal persons who are located in Gabon, carry out professional, personal, commercial or cultural activities in Gabon, or justify any other direct or indirect link with Gabon.