You may still be able to renew your domain if it is within 30 days after expiry date.
Domains that fail to renew and are deleted under 'normal circumstances' are taken offline for 30 calendar days in an "expired" status, and may only be renewed by the registrant (the person who originally registered the domain) – this is a kind of "grace period" for people who forgot to renew their domain.
After the 30 day period, the domain is scheduled for deletion (placed into a status called Pending Delete) and nobody is able to renew/register the name until it is deleted on the "next business day".
For example, if your domain expired on Thursday 30th July, it's taken offline in an expired state and only the registrant (domain owner) may renew it during this time. Failure to renew will result in the domain being placed into Pending Delete 30 days later (i.e: Saturday 29th August) and no one is able to renew the domain. On Monday 31st August the domain is deleted at a random time between 10:30am and 5:00pm You should be free to register an expired name after it is deleted, but be aware there are some "back-order" services that are "catching" expired names after they're deleted (Google search: domain8 ) so you might have a difficulty re-registering the name if someone else is trying to purchase it.
