March 2009 Archives

April is almost upon us yet again, which if you're a domain holder means time to renew all your .eu domains that you got when .eu registration opened.

I don't like comparing prices with our competitors as it can get a little bit silly, but last night, for "a laugh", I decided to check out how much some of the other EU registrars were charging. I was amazed!

We charge a mere 5 euro (ex-vat) for .eu domains, while it's not uncommon for others to charge 15 euro or more!

So if you've got a few .eu domains why not save a bit of cash and transfer them to us?

If you haven't got a .eu domain already then don't let pricing stop you - at 5 euro they cost about the same as a roll and a bottle of coke! (or a coffee)






NB: Blacknight is an accredited Eurid registrar

We've run competitions in the past.

With most of them the prize was either a hosting plan or a domain or maybe even both.

We haven't given away non-hosting prizes in quite some time, apart from the hoodies a few weeks ago, so we thought it was about time that we did.

So this time round we're giving away a Wacom graphics tablet.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

So what's the catch?

Well the catch is that we're throwing down the gauntlet to the designers and creative types out there. We currently have some tshirts and hoodies over on Spreadshirt, however we're looking for something new and interesting. The domainer tshirts over here are more fun than the current set we have and if you like online tshirt shops I'm sure you'll have seen plenty of funky tshirts.

We want a design that reflects us, that people will want to wear and that people will actually like.

NB: As we will be using the design for tshirts and other promotional gear the designer must assign us all rights on the chosen winning design

If anyone has any questions or queries about the competition please feel free to ask.

We'll run the competition for the next two weeks.

UPDATE March 30th 2009: We're extending the deadline by a further week

We are delighted to be able to tell the world that we are now an ICANN accredited registrar!

I've been attending ICANN events and trying to get to grips with the entire setup for the last couple of years and quickly realised that the only way we could really move forward was to become accredited. We're already accredited with a lot of the ccTLD operators, such as Nominet, AFNIC, Eurid and several others, so getting rid of the middleman for our gTLD domains made sense.

With our own accreditation we'd be able to interact directly with the registry operators and with the wider ICANN and internet community.

I also realised that since the entire RegisterFly debacle  "buying a registrar" was possible, but it would have been a really really bad idea.

So instead of opting for the easy "off the shelf" solution we went through the entire accreditation process from start to finish, so we got it on our own merits, making us the first Irish company to have ever done so.

The accreditation process can be quite confusing, but luckily several good friends and colleagues were able to help clarify various parts of it along the way:

• Jothan Frakes - he's like a walking talking domain encyclopedia (currently working on new gTLDs over here)
  
• Frank Michlick - he's done a lot of this stuff so many times before
• Mark Klein - he's a cool guy and really helpful
• Steve Gobin and Tim Cole - both incredibly helpful and patient 

While we aren't setup to use our accreditation yet with any of the domain registries we will be soon enough (I'm not sure how long that's going to take, but I know that I will have to deal with a LOT of paperwork in the coming weeks!)

We can, however, use the ICANN logo!

As we go through the process of getting the accreditation with the individual domain registry operators (Verisign, Afilias, PIR, dotMobi, Telnic etc.,) I'll try to keep people up to date on our progress.

You can see a full list of the current accredited registrars on the IANA site as well

Next week a couple of us will be travelling to Phantasialand, which is somewhere near Cologne, Germany.

For the last few years I've been getting invites to attend WebhostingDay, but haven't been able to actually attend.

It should be a good opportunity for us to meet up with several of our clients, industry colleagues and suppliers, while also having a bit of fun and maybe even learning new stuff.

The timetable for the three day event is a nice mixture of sessions and social events, so I am really looking forward to it. (I had to skip DomainFest in Hollywood earlier this year, so I've got a bit of catching up to do!)

If anyone is heading over and would like to meet up feel free to email me.

ICANN's 34th public meeting officially opened earlier today in Mexico City.

The "hot topic" for this meeting will be "new gTLDs".

At the meeting in Paris last year ICANN paved the way for the introduction of a whole new range of domain extensions.

While many in the media hailed the announcement as being a "free for all" and many talked of there being new extensions available within months, the reality is quite different. As some like to say, the "devil is in the details".

Without getting bogged down in the details that will delay the launch, the new gTLDs definitely offer some very interesting openings to business and social groups.
For example, there is already an active group in Scotland campaigning for .sco, which could be used to promote Scottish identity and culture. There already is .cat for Catalans.

In essence the new gTLDs can probably be seen as broadly fitting into two categories, though some may disagree with this, namely commercial and non-commercial. You could expand that to include a third one ie. "special interest", which would include the likes of DotSport.

All in all the next year or so should prove to be quite an exciting and interesting time in the domain world!

If you want to find out more about what's going on I'd recommend checking out the current ICANN meeting website, as there are plenty of ways that you can participate remotely (I am, as I couldn't attend in person)

Also worth reading is Antony Van Couvering's excellent article debunking some of the reasons people are putting forward against the introduction of new TLDs. He's also put together quite a few resources on the entire new gTLD process and in case you were thinking of setting one up - be warned - it's an expensive process!

People get confused by technology, so they reach out to their providers for help and guidance.

Unfortunately not everyone is good humoured or patient about it (and that's on both sides).

Earlier today I was trying to sort out a rather annoying issue I had with Flickr (it was of my own making - not Flickr's), so I opened a support ticket.

What amused me, however, was the response from their system:

We'd also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.

I'm seriously tempted to add something similar to our automated replies, though I'm not sure if all our clients would appreciate the humour!

No matter how hard you try to provide a reasonable level of service there will be issues.

No matter how many happy clients a company / supplier / service provider may have, there will always be a certain number of people who simply cannot be satisfied.

It took me quite some time to "come to grips" with that. I always take negative feedback we receive quite seriously, but I also have to realise that in some cases there simply is no way to please all clients all of the time. All you can really hope to do is "your best" and if there is a breakdown in communication then you can try to learn from the mistake and improve the process and the experience moving forward.

When we first started out we did not attract "mainstream" clients. We were dealing more with the "geeks" than with the "normal" business types. Over time our client base has grown considerably and has widened.

We've changed the way we interact with our clientele and as the number of staff has mushroomed, we've also had to change how we deal with each other internally. To that end I've spent quite a bit of time in meetings with staff over the last few months working on ways to improve and streamline processes. We still need to improve on a lot of things, but we're getting there ... one step at a time.

But let's come back to the Flickr email for a moment...

Flickr do several things in that email that really impress me. On the one hand they've reassured me that they've got my query, while also showing me that they can be good humoured about it all, while still being efficient and professional. But more importantly, from my perspective, is that they've gently but firmly told me not to bug them with an issue I've already highlighted, as it won't speed up the resolution.

On our end we have several methods of communication open to our clients to help them get the answers they need in a reasonably timely fashion.

We expose our server status 24/7/365, so people should be able to see what's going on with most of our "shared" services immediately. If there is an issue 9 times out of 10 we'll be already working on a resolution by the time anyone spots it (there have been some odd cases where that didn't work out, so I'm hedging my bets!).

Clients can of course submit queries to our technical support staff either online or via email, and we do our best to post any outage / maintenance / service affecting issues on the status site, which we host completely outside our network (it doesn't even use our dns).

We are going to be expanding and updating the resources available in our support centre in the coming weeks and months (as someone pointed out to me earlier this week several of the Mac tutorials are out of date!)

However, there probably are things that we could do better, so if anyone has any suggestions please feel free to share them with us, either in the comments here or email me directly (michele@blacknight.ie lands in my inbox).