Blacknight Blog - Hosting - Domains

Account Migration Update

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:17:10 -0600

I hate it when things don't happen when and how I want them to happen. I find it incredibly frustrating.

With the launch of our new hosting control panel, billing system and backend we knew that we were going to have a lot of work on our hands. We also knew that no matter how carefully we planned certain things it would still take a long time to get it all the way we wanted it - we still haven't!

One of the key tasks that we needed to complete was migrating billing accounts from the old system to the new one.

Of course, as anyone who's ever done this sort of thing knows, it's a hell of a lot easier in theory than it is in reality.

We were incredibly naive in our estimates and so we emailed thousands of clients earlier this year to tell them about the move, but then we couldn't actually complete it!

Talk about annoying - and I sincerely mean that - we wanted everyone off the old billing system as soon as possible as well...

In any case we have moved the migration project along.
It's still not 100%, but we have now got to the stage where we are able to actually create new accounts for existing clients on our new system, so you should be getting emails about it over the next couple of days..

We're still running into odd little issues, so I will NOT be giving people any timelines on anything.

Sorry - I just can't do it!

Purr For Christmas Opening Hours

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:16:09 -0600

I really should apologise to the dog lovers for my choice of "cute animal", but this little fella was irresistible! (Besides I own cats not dogs, so deal with it!)

Anyhow ...

Christmas is only a few weeks away, so I thought it best to give you all plenty of advance warning about open hours and deadlines...

First off...

Office Hours

Our offices will be closed from Wednesday December 24th until Friday January 2nd 2009.

If you have a sales or accounts query feel free to submit it, as we will have staff checking up on stuff over the break - we just won't be opening the offices fully (there is a logic to this - believe me!)

Hosting is a 24/7/365 business, so we will be offering technical support over the Christmas period....

For colo and dedicated clients please use the out of hours contact details that you have been given - if you don't have them ask. Seriously.

If you want to know what's going on with servers on our network (and yes we do monitor them 24/7/365 - believe me!) check out our status site which includes a server status monitor.

We will have support staff working on the following days:

Monday December 29th
Tuesday December 30th
Wednesday December 31st

IE Domain Orders

While you can submit orders for new IE domains at any time please bear in mind that the IE Domain Registry will be closed from Tuesday December 23rd at 5.30pm until Friday January 2nd 2009 at 9.00 am. So no new orders, including updates, will be fully processed during that period.
If you want to register a .ie domain before Christmas we'd strongly recommend that you do so by close of business the previous Thursday (you may be lucky and get a domain fully registered with a shorter timescale, but 2 -3 working days is probably saner).

In case I forget - which can happen - we hope you all have a pleasant and peaceful Christmas with your friends and loved ones!

SEO Competition Winner Announced

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:38:02 -0600

Remember the SEO competition from a while back?

We said we'd offer the winner two things:

Hosting
Domain

(boring details on previous post)

Damien announced the winner yesterday, so congratulations to Paul Savage!

What Makes dotmobi and dottel different?

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:28:37 -0600

When I attended the ICANN meeting in Lisbon back in 2007 I got introduced to several of the dotMobi team, but I also got to meet a few of the guys from dotTel. At the time I'd got my head around the concept of dotmobi, but I honestly couldn't understand why dotTel was different.

While I now do understand the difference it's obvious from the online chatter that a lot of people still don't fully understand the key differences between the two namespaces.

I was going to write a simple explanation, but fortunately the dotMobi team have already done it for me.

Vance's post from a couple of weeks ago goes into the main differences between mobi(le) and tel(ephone) that is the key differenciator between the two TLDs and is definitely worth reading.

UPDATE: As the .tel sunrise is opening tomorrow the level of press coverage they are attracting is increasing. A post over on the New York Times site is well worth reading if you're still trying to come to grips with .tel domains:
.Tel Them Where to Find You

Phishing Attacks and Domains

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:12:45 -0600

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) have published their report covering the first half of 2008.

The report is quite detailed, but some of the major points may be garnered from the first page introduction:

Our major findings are:

1. Phishers continue to target specific Top-Level Domains (TLDs) and specific domain name registrars, and shift their preferences over time. Metrics that measure the pervasiveness of phishing in TLDs provide a valuable way to identify exploitation by phishers who register domain names.

2. Anti-phishing programs implemented by domain name registries can have a noticeable effect on the up-times (durations) of phishing attacks. We see some direct correlation between the efforts of several large gTLD and ccTLD operators and the amount of time that phishing sites remained live within their TLDs.

3. Phishers are engaged in the large-scale use of subdomain services to host and manage their phishing sites. Such attacks even account for the majority of attacks in certain large TLDs.

The report also concludes that the number of phishing attacks using IP addresses has dropped, while the number using domains has increased, which would be a logical enough progression.

Business Wire has some coverage here, while you can read the entire report here:
APWG_GlobalPhishingSurvey1H2008.pdf

Camera.co.uk Sells For 35k

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:43:59 -0600

I've mentioned TRAFFIC Down Under a couple of times over the last few weeks - mainly because I wish I was there! (More on my personal domain blog admittedly!)

Yesterday's main event was the Aftermarket.com auction which you could have followed live online.

Why do I mention it?

Well unlike a lot of the other domain auctions which tend to focus on .com domains, this one had a nice mix of ccTLD names in there, including camera.co.uk.

Camera.co.uk had a reserve of $15k and finally went under the hammer for $35k!

What a great domain! If I was Pixmania (or similar) I'd love to get my hands on that domain.

Adam Strong has a couple of posts about the event over on DNN including the full results of the auction

Yet Another Domain Renewal Scam

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:01:57 -0600

Domain Renewal Group seem to be using the same modus operandi as Domain Registry of America (DROA) - they may even be the same company for all I know!

In any case here's a sample letter (click to enlarge):

Notice the pricing on a .org domain - €28 per annum!!!! We charge less than €6 at the moment and I honestly can't understand why anyone would even dream of paying more than €10.

In any case if you get any of these letters I suggest dumping them - I've had a nice thick pile of them to date!

Single Character dotMobi Domains Coming Soon

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:29:39 -0600

Short domains are better, but even more so when you're trying to tap in the address with one hand on your mobile device.

Caroline has posted on the DotMobi blog that they'll be making available single character dotMobi domains very soon (ie. a.mobi, 1.mobi etc.,) in a similar fashion to their city domains applications process ie. via proposals NOT auctions.

It will be interesting to see who gets the domains and what they do with them.

Dottel Coming Soon Covered in Sunday Business Post

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:04:29 -0600

I've mentioned the upcoming launch of .tel a couple of times in recent months.

If you're interested in playing around with .tel domains, then head on over to their "playground", where you can signup for a free vip.tel subdomain.

The VIP program allows you to see how a .tel domain can work and some of the things that you can do with it, though with something as flexible as a domain name it's impossible to know what people may get up to in the end.

In any case I had a chat with Adrian Weckler in The Sunday Business Post last week, which led to this article in the Sunday Business Post. Just to clarify one point, as some people seem to have misunderstood me, I never suggested that .tel would be a flop - I'm just naturally cautious about how quickly it will be adopted. I hope the takeup is huge, because I love the concept.

Keeping In Touch

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:34:19 -0600

Over the last few months we've expanded the number of contact points available to people who want to find out what we're up to, or simply want to ask a question or get help.

So, to make my life that bit easier, I thought I'd put up a brief summary of how to contact us and find out what we're up to.

Buying Stuff / Information on Products / Services:

Our main website (obviously!)

Our sales team can be contacted via email or phone (during office hours). We currently have several numbers - a locall one, a "normal" one and both UK and US telephone lines (and faxlines)

We also offer livechat for both technical queries and sales queries during office hours Monday to Friday

This blog tends to be the main place where we'll talk about new stuff or try to give you greater insight into what we currently offer

We're also on twitter (which hooks into both this blog and the technical one) (if you're bored I twitter here)

You can also post queries over on our forum (if it's a technical emergency please contact support - seriously!)

Technical Queries / Updates

If you've got an issue then feel free to contact our support team (you can also email support@blacknight.com). If you are contacting our support staff try to give them as much information as possible (see previous post) - it makes life easier for everyone!

We post details of any scheduled maintenance or issues on our offsite technical blog

Dedicated and colocation clients - you should have an out of hours contact number - if you don't let us know

We're also over on:
Facebook
Boards.ie

Have I forgotten anywhere?

Big ccTLD Auction From CoCCA

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:30:40 -0600

CoCCA members have got together to offer a very cool set of name bundles - 100 in total!

Most of the names being bundled are generic terms, so there are groups like:
bargain.cx (Christmas Island)
bargain.gs
bargain.ht
bargain.ki
bargain.na
bargain.nf
bargain.tl
bargain.as (American Samoa)
bargain.pe

I've no idea how much they'll sell for, but if I had money to play with I'd be more than happy to gamble on a couple of these bundles.

There's more info on the CoCCA site, while Antony Van Couvering has a look at the offering as well

The auction neatly coincides with Traffic Down Under

A Bit Of Local Press Coverage

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:38:35 -0600

Since our offices are based in Carlow getting some coverage in the local media was bound to happen at some point.

This week's Carlow Nationalist has a short piece on the Net Visionaries (click to enlarge):

Of course they spelt my name incorrectly, ,but we'll forgive them for that

Blacknight On Facebook

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:04:07 -0600

I've been playing around with Facebook for the last months and noticed that a lot of companies we deal with on a regular basis have a "presence" on there. Companies and organisations like dotMobi, PIR, DomainsBot and thousands of others are "on" Facebook in some shape or form.

We are too, but we haven't been promoting it actively, as I wasn't really sure what to do with it! (I'm not suggesting I've "seen the light" or anything, but I thought we might as well just "dive in" and see what happens)

Once we get enough fans I'll probably throw out a few promotion codes to our fans (ie. you'll have to be a fan via facebook to get one)

Over the last few days I've uploaded a few photos of our offices and some of the team to our "gallery" and tried to get a few more people involved.

If anyone has any crazy suggestions on how to use Facebook for business please let me know - I'm still trying to work it out!

You'll find the Blacknight page here - come say "hi"!

Publish Information People Want

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:08:50 -0600

Some websites are wonderful. Some aren't.

You don't need to have a beautiful website for it to be useful.

If you are promoting a physical shop use some common sense.

Let people know the two key things that they want to know most:

Where is your shop? Telling me it's in London isn't particularly helpful. Giving me an indication of how to get there including tube stops etc., would be a lot more useful. Don't assume I know what UK postcodes mean (not everyone is English!)
Publish your opening hours clearly. (Argos - I'm looking at you!)

Why people forget these basic things is beyond me.

Phishers Targetting Domain Owners

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 07:57:03 -0600

I mentioned that phishers were targetting eNom quite recently, but it seems that eNom was not alone. We've also been informed that some of the other registrars, including Network Solutions, are being targetted.

If you get a suspicious email purporting to be from your domain registrar please let us know.

Take a few simple precautions.

DO NOT send credit card information via email.

If you are being asked to login to a registrars site to verify data DO NOT use the link in the email. Go directly to the registrar's site in your browser ie. type the link in yourself

If I get hold of any of the phishing emails I'll try to post screenshots

Update: To learn more about the email targetting Network Solutions' users and to see a sample check out their blog post.