NOTICE: .ORG registration will be unavailable from Saturday, Jan 25 9:00 a.m. EST to Sunday, Jan 26 6:00 p.m. EST.
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.ORG renewals and modifications will be unavailable from Saturday, Jan 25 9:00 a.m. EST to Tuesday, Jan 28 6:00 p.m. EST.
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That notice is from a site that gives free domain name? Im not sure. Isn't it that your site cannot be down if u are not hosted on that site?

P.S. That site doesnt host other sites.

that's just talking about registrations, not hosting. so apparently for some reason they can't register domains with those extensions on those times. there must have been a link where it says "click here for more information"- try clicking that to see what it says.

oh thanks! I understand it now. I was just wondering 'coz I dont want my site to be down anytime =). Do u think there's a catch for that domain registration?

if it says its free, yes.

free domain registration just doesn't exist any more. if a site says that it will register a domain for free, either you have to buy something first, they own it (and can therefore take it away at any time, or charge insane amounts of money if you want to renew it in your own name), or they put ads ALL OVER it.

your best bet would be to go with an established, reputable registrar. I've never heard bad things about http://www.godaddy.com and they're the cheapest I know of (US$8.95 per year)

and downtime depends more on your host- once the domain is registered and DNS is set up, the only thing that will cause your site to be down as long as the domain is still valid (make sure you renew it when you have to :)) is the host.