At times I feel like I'm a broken record. I keep finding myself saying the same thing to people, possibly using different words or turns of phrase, but the message is essentially the same.

If you register a domain name and pay for it you have certain rights. Of course you also have certain obligations, but most of them aren't particularly cumbersome.

What I wrote last year still hold true.

Basics:

You are entitled to access to your EPP key for your .com without paying a fee. Registrars should provide that to you in a timely fashion.

If you want to transfer the billing of a .ie domain you DO NOT need to deal with the original IEDR reseller. If you only want to move the hosting you DO NOT need to move the actual billing.

If you want to move your hosting you should be able to do so.

Unfortunately there are no clear guidelines from ICANN mandating how resellers should handle things, so you may need to refer back to the actual registrar that the reseller is using if you run into issues.

We recently had yet another issue with a particular UK company that refuses to handover clients' domains without levying a wholly unreasonable fee. If that happens to you you should try reporting them to their upstream registrar who may be in a position to take action against them.

Another "old chestnut" is the unreasonable locking of domains by some registrars after a domain has changed hands. While the argument that it is to prevent "hijacking" holds some water it's also rather "convenient" for them, as they often get another year's registration fees from clients as a result of the restriction.

ICANN recently clarified a very important policy point - inter-registrar transfers. Hopefully this will be on the agenda at the next ICANN meeting, which is scheduled for June in Paris.

The key point raised is worth repeating here:

A registrant change to Whois information is not a valid basis for denying a transfer request.

One very large US based registrar has been denying transfers for a long time based on this. I won't name them, but it doesn't take a lot of work to find out who they are.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Journalists call from time to time asking me to talk about various internet related topics. Most of the time the publications or shows are "general interest", so you can only talk about very general things.

Last night, however, was quite different, as I was one of the guests on "Domain Masters" which is broadcast and streamed weekly at 7pm EST (11pm in Ireland, midnight CET)

The show's host last night was my good friend Jothan Frakes who is one of the domain name industry's gurus.

Although I was very nervous (which probably showed!) we had a nice chat about Blacknight, domains and the internet industry.

If anyone wants to hear the show there should be an mp3 version available on the WebmasterRadio site at some time over the next couple of days.

UPDATE: The Mp3 from last night is now available on the site http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Internet-Marketing/Domain-Masters/Geo-Domain-Expo-and-BlackKnight.htm

UPDATE 2: Of course if I provided proper hyperlinks people might be actually able to use them!
So here you go: Show details including podcast

Posted by Michele Neylon at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a domain registrant you have certain rights. Unfortunately those rights can be abused by companies that don't believe in ethical business practices.

It would be nice and simple if the whois display were the same across all TLDs (ie. domain extensions), but they're not.

A basic right is for the domain to be registered to you and under your control.

That means that the domain details should show yours. For example a .ie domain registered to me shows:

status: Active
nserver: NS.BLACKNIGHTSOLUTIONS.COM
nserver: NS2.BLACKNIGHTSOLUTIONS.COM
source: IEDR

person: Michele Neylon
nic-hdl: ABG182-IEDR
source: IEDR

person: Blacknight.ie Hostmaster
nic-hdl: AAM456-IEDR
source: IEDR

For some TLDs, such as .eu the command line whois will give out varying amounts of information and you may need to go to the web based whois server to get the full details.

In either case the registrant is listed somewhere, even if the public cannot see it easily.

If the registrant wants to move their domain between registrars that is their right.

Under ICANN rules registrars are obliged to provide the EPP codes to registrants in a timely fashion (bearing in mind that you cannot transfer newly registered .com's etc., between registrars immediately)

If they want to update their domain's nameservers then they should be able to do so.

Unfortunately this does not happen.

The reality is that a disproportionate number of companies are denying registrants basic rights.

In some cases they may be doing this by accident, but in other cases it is 100% deliberate.

There is no valid reason for your web designer or developer to put their details all over your domain. None.

If you have asked your designer / developer to register a domain for you and paid them for it then it should be registered to you (which is one of the reasons why .ie domains are attractive!).

Over the past couple of years I've seen some crazy things, including a particular "registrar" that registers ALL .co.uk domains to themselves regardless of who has requested the domain.

Another company warehoused hundreds of .eu domains "on behalf" of their clients ie. in the hope that the clients would want to register the domains at some point in the future. Of course it wasn't clear if they would be charged a premium for this "service".

If a provider won't update the DNS for a domain then there is something wrong somewhere.

(If they can't update it due to the DNS not being loaded that is the registrant or their provider's issue!)

There's no good reason to delay handing over an EPP key.

If a registrant wants their co.uk domain retagged simply do it.

Why make people suffer?

Posted by Michele Neylon at 11:19 AM | Permalink

As we are active members of Nominet, the .uk registry, we often have to modify, renew etc., domains on our account.

While it might be possible for each and every member of our staff to become intimate with the specific commands necessary to interface with the registry's systems it would be a bit unrealistic. Our staff have enough on their plates!

So just over a year ago I asked one of our technical staff to do up a simple, easy to use, web interface for non-technical staff to use.

Over a year later it's been re-written several times and now supports most of the Nominet automaton commands.

So you don't need to spend 3/4 of an hour reading up on which template you need to use to perform a specific action.

Now I would never be so silly as to say that it's attractive to look at, but it's not meant to be!

So, in the interests of helping the wider Nominet community we've decided to make the interface software available to other Nominet members.

NB: If you are not a Nominet registrar this software will not be of any use to you. I repeat. You need to be a Nominet registrar (tag holder) to use this. You'll also need to read the include README file carefully.

Although we're generous people we would ask that you maintain the copyright notice that is included.
Full details are in the aforementioned README along with our nice big disclaimer - simple version being - if your server explodes or anything else happens please don't complain to us.

So, without further ado here is the link to the software:
Nominet Automaton Web Interface

You will need a recent version of PHP 4 or 5 to make use of it. Further details in the "famous" README.

Any issues please let us know.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

We have been informed that Nominet's backend system is currently experiencing some delays.

In some cases this can lead to a 2 or 3 hour delay between a request and it being actioned.

If you are registering any co.uk domains or have requested any changes of DNS etc., then please be aware that there is a delay, which is, unfortunately, out of our control.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 7:39 PM | Permalink

Nominet, the registry for .co.uk domains, will be conducting maintenance over the weekend of July 28th and 29th.

From the official notification:
The first outage will be from 09:00 on Saturday 28 July and will last for one hour. During this time, all messages to the Automaton will be queued and they will then be processed at the end of this period. The DAC and Whois services will not be available. The online services, normally available through our web site, will not be available either and a notification page will be displayed in place of these systems.

The second outage will be from 09:00 on Sunday 29 July and will again last for one hour. The same services will be affected during this second outage.

Although the outages are scheduled to last a total of two hours they may last longer.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 10:10 AM | Permalink

A lot of people signup for hosting using free email accounts or maybe their "current" work email address.

Unfortunately nobody on our end can possibly know if those email addresses are valid weeks, months or years later.

If you change your email address or telephone number you can easily update it via the control panel, or contact our accounts team and get them to do it for you.

If you don't keep the details up to date you may miss important emails from us about your hosting account, your domain renewal or even the chance to get something for nothing :)

Seriously, though, it is important that people keep their contact details up to date.

If you change jobs or stop using your free email account you do run a very serious risk of missing an important email from your hosting provider, registrar or ISP.

Take the time to check that the details on your .com domains are correct, especially if you have transferred them from another provider.

Under ICANN rules the WHOIS data has to be accurate at all times.

With other registries, such as Eurid, only a very small amount of personal data is viewable to the public via standard whois. It is very hard to spam the contacts on a .eu domain, for example, so please do not let a fear of spam lead to you losing out on a domain's renewal.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 4:49 PM | Permalink

Nominet has been working on upgrades to their backend systems over the last few weeks.

The upgrades were meant to have been finished by this morning, but there have been some delays.

This has led to a slight backlog on requests for new registrations, updates and renewals.

All requests are being queued.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 11:01 AM | Permalink