Reminder for .uk renewal

Nominet, the national registry for domain names ending with .uk has warned businesses to re-register their sites or risk losing them.

The first set of two-year registrations are due for renewal within the next few weeks and domain owners need to pay for another two years if they want to keep them.

The warning covers the five second-level domains - co.uk, org.uk, net.uk, ltd.uk and plc.uk - within the top-level domain, .uk.

Addresses are usually registered either directly by companies or via their internet service provider.

A representative for Nominet said: 'Invoices will be sent out on 1 August, so we are warning companies now. We suspect a lot of people will forget that something they registered two years ago is up for renewal, so it's just a reminder.'

He added if companies do not renew the registration, their domain name will be suspended, meaning that all internet services reliant on the use of the suspended domain name will become inoperable. Companies' email address would not receive messages and customers would be unable to reach Websites through the company's familiar URL, the representative warned.

After a period of suspension, the registration will be cancelled. Once this occurs, another company is able to register the same name.

Nominet UK is the national registry for all internet domain names ending in .uk.

Each country has to have a central registry to store the unique names used on the internet and their associated numeric addresses.