Updated
Every spring I put a boat back in the water, and the job has taught me something that transfers directly. The list is boring, it is always the same list, and every item on it exists because somebody once skipped it and found out in July, a long way from shore, that it mattered. Nobody enjoys commissioning, which is the boat word for working that list. Everybody who has ever skipped a step enjoys the season less.
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A campground website has a commissioning list too. It runs in four passes, and here it is in season order.
Four words this list uses
Your domain is your address, the name people type. The registrar is the company you rent that name from, and the registrant is the person or business the name is registered to, which is not always whoever pays the bill. Hosting is the rented computer your site's files sit on, a separate service from the domain and sometimes a separate company. The booking handoff is the moment a guest leaves your website for the reservation system, whether that is Campspot, RoverPass, or a form of your own.
The twenty checks, in season order
| Pass | Checks | What it protects | Skip it and you find out |
|---|---|---|---|
| December to January | 3 | The address itself: the site and the email on it | In May, when the site is gone and the renewal notices went to a stranger |
| January to February | 6 | The answers a February visitor is looking for | On the first phone call that starts with "your website says" |
| February to March | 6 | That the site still works the way a guest uses it | Never, because a broken form does not tell you |
| March | 5 | The site through a summer with nobody at the desk | In July, when a storm closes a road and nobody has the login |
December and January: the three that can take the site down
- Check when your domain expires. Log in to your registrar and read the renewal date, the card on file, and the contact email. Turn on auto-renew and put a card on it that does not expire before the domain does.
- Check whose name the domain is in. Open the domain's registrant details. If it says a web company, a nephew, or a former employee, you do not fully control your own address. Ask the registrar how to change the registrant to you or your business, and start it now.
- Confirm your hosting renews too. Same check, same consequence, separate bill. Renewal date, card on file, and who receives the email.
The domain comes first because of what happens when it lapses. ICANN, the body that sets the rules registrars follow, requires a registrar to cut off an expired domain for at least the last eight days it can still be renewed; that is a minimum, and a registrar can cut it off from the day it expires. The cutoff takes the website and the email on it down together, and the warnings went to whatever address is on file. If that is the web company that set the site up years ago, nobody at the park sees them.
The registrant check matters for a quieter reason. Under ICANN's transfer policy a registrar must lock a domain against moving to another registrar for 60 days after a change of registrant, unless you opted out beforehand. A correction started in January is settled before opening day. The same correction started in May runs into the season.
January and February: the content pass
- Update your season dates. Opening day, closing day, and any mid-season changes. This is the first thing a stranger looks for in February and the first thing that goes stale.
- Update your rates. All of them, including the ones on a PDF you forgot you'd linked. Then check they match whatever your booking system charges, because a mismatch turns a first phone call into an argument.
- Delete last season's notices. The pool-closure note from August, the burn ban from July, the "see you next year" message. Old notices tell a visitor nobody's home.
- Reread your policies as a stranger. Pets, quiet hours, campfires, visitors, rig age, cancellation. If anything changed last year because of something that happened, make sure the page says so. Policies are cheapest to enforce when they were readable before the booking.
- Update the map and the site list. Sites added, sites retired, a loop renumbered, hookups upgraded. If the map on the website no longer matches the ground, fix that now.
- Check what's nearby. The restaurant that closed, the store with new hours, the trail that's rerouted. Guests use your website as a local guide, and it is an easy thing to keep current.
February and March: the mechanical pass
- Fill in your own contact form. From a phone, on mobile data, not office wifi. Then confirm the email arrived, in the right inbox, not in a spam folder nobody checks.
- Call your own phone number from the website. Tap it. Make sure it dials, and make sure it dials the phone somebody will answer in May.
- Load the site on a phone with poor signal. Turn the wifi off, stand somewhere with two bars, and load the home page. However long that took is the wait your arriving guests get at the highway exit.
- Click every link. Especially the booking button, the map, the rules PDF, and anything pointing at a third party. Links rot quietly over a winter.
- Test the booking handoff. Start a real reservation from your own website and go as far as you can without paying. Check that the site type names match, the rates match, and the confirmation email says the right check-in time.
- Check your photos still describe the place. New bathhouse, new playground, a tree that came down, a loop that's grown in. A photo that no longer matches the property is worse than no photo. If yours need redoing, here's how to do it yourself.
A broken contact form is silent: the site looks fine, the inquiries simply stop, and nothing on the screen tells you. Test it from a phone on mobile data because that is how a guest at a rest stop fills it in.
The booking handoff is where the website and the reservation system have to agree. The four pieces of information that must match in both places are laid out in what belongs on a campground website versus a booking platform; the season test is walking through them as a guest.
March: housekeeping
- Make sure backups are running, and that you know where they are. Ask your host or whoever built the site to show you the newest backup and its date. A backup nobody has ever restored is a rumor.
- Apply updates. Website software gets security updates the same way your phone does: log in to the site's admin and install whatever it is offering. A winter's worth of skipped updates leaves known holes open for the whole season.
- Confirm at least two people can edit the site. If only one person knows the login and that person is on the mower for the next five months, nothing gets updated. Write the logins down somewhere the owner controls.
- Post one thing. A short update saying you're open, what's new this year, and what to expect. It tells a visitor the place is run by people who are paying attention.
- Decide who updates notices during the season, and how fast. Water shutoffs, burn bans, storm damage, a road closure. Agree on the person and the target now, because in July there's no time to have the conversation.
What this list deliberately leaves out
Search listings, map profiles, and reviews are their own job with their own timing, and they belong to the sister practice at CampgroundSEO.com rather than here. This list is about the website you own.
It also leaves out the reservation system. If your bottleneck is availability and deposits rather than information, that's a different tool: do I need Campspot or RoverPass if I already have a website?
If the list turns up more than you want to fix
That's normal, and February is the right time to find out. A rebuild started in winter is a calm project. The same rebuild started in June is an emergency with a season attached.
Three sizes, one fixed price, no monthly bill: Starter at $2,800, Grow at $4,500, Complete at $7,500. Send your list to hello@campgroundwebdesigner.com and I'll tell you which one it adds up to, or tell you it's a two-hour fix and you don't need me at all.
Checked against ICANN policy pages on 2026-09-21: Transfer Policy (updated 21 February 2024), Expired Registration Recovery Policy, Expired domain names
Common questions
How much warning will I get before the domain expires?
ICANN's expiry policy requires the registrar to send at least two reminders, one about a month before and one about a week before, plus one more within five days after expiry. They go to the registrant's email on file, so an old address on the account means no warning at all.
The domain has already expired. Is it gone?
Not necessarily. Call the registrar today and ask whether the name is still renewable, because an expired domain stays renewable for a while before it is deleted. Once the registrar deletes the name there is a 30-day redemption window in which it can be restored, and after that it can be registered by anyone, first come, first served.
I cannot log in to the registrar at all. What then?
That is the problem to fix first. Whoever holds that login holds the name, so the first job is getting the account into the owner's hands, with the business's own email as the contact. Ask the registrar's support whether you need account recovery or a change of ownership; they are different processes.
Do I still test the booking handoff if I use Campspot or RoverPass?
Yes, and test it from the guest's side, on a phone, starting from a site-type page rather than the home page. The platform runs the reservation, but the guest arrived from your page with a price and a loop name in their head, and the test is whether the platform shows them the same two things.
Canadian? The same three sizes in Canadian dollars are on the CAD pricing page.