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News, tips and reviews from one of Ireland's leading hosting companies |
As of a few minutes ago we have dropped the price of IE domains across the board.
No special links or coupons required.
ALL IE domains are now 21 euro ex-vat for both new registrations and renewals.
We've also got a list of the latest dropped IE domains, so you can grab a previously owned domain - nothing wrong with secondhand domains!
Well it isn't quite Web 2.0. But it's now new and improved and shiny.
And before I get any complaints, we know Safari doesn't look perfect yet :-).
We've removed .net and Linux VPS plans, you now have a simplified version of the site that has VPS plans that are OS agnostic. When you click buy now you'll be able to use our fancy vps-shop web application to choose your OS and the package you want and whether or not you want to add Plesk!
So where is this fancy application I hear you cry. Any buy now link on Blacknightvps.com will now take you to it.
All pricing for each period and for plesk etc is all contained within the web app.
There's a few small issues outstanding that we'll be fixing in time.
1) Safari doesn't work well right now (if at all :/)
2) The initial page load is a little slow, we're aware of this, it's because of the volume of information being retrieved from our backend that causes this, we're working on it.
3) Changing OS doesn't appear to keep your selected options in all browsers. However if you change plan from basic to standard it keeps all your choices!
4) Non javascript users we'll have a more accessible version soon (within a week or two) that'll work particularly well for the visually impaired.
Please let us know what you think of the new simplified version of the site.
All feedback and comments are welcome.
I'm delighted to announce that the IE zone rebuilds are now more frequent.
The new zone rebuild times are:
10:00, 12:00, 17:00 and 22:00
AND it is set to rebuild 7 days a week, 365 days a year!
This is a major improvement for IE domain holders, as now updates, changes and new registrations will be processed much more efficiently.
Today is a historical day for the IE namespace, as it has finally breached the one hundred thousand domain barrier.
The graph below shows growth over time
It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the namespace to double again in size.
Compared to some of our EU neighbours 100 thousand domains is a very small number. The UK registry, Nominet, handles in excess of 100 thousand new registrations every month!
Of course it's a bit unfair to draw parallels between the UK and Ireland.
While there have been considerable improvements in the registration process many registrants still feel that the process is quite arduous compared to that of .com.
In many ways the biggest improvement was the introduction of an API, which allows companies such as ourselves to send registration requests, updates and deletions directly to the registry.
In real terms that means that as soon as you place an order for an IE domain on our site (and pay us) it gets sent into the registry's queue.
So, if you do a WHOIS lookup you'd see:
% Application Pending - There is currently an application being processed for % the domain name you have requested. If unsuccessful, the application would % expire on the date above.
While the technology has improved some of the policies haven't, which leads to many of us having a certain love/hate relationship with the namespace.
Personally I have mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand I've been more than happy to support the growth of the IE namespace over the last few years.
The relaxation of some of the rules has made it significantly easier to register domains, but there is always room for improvement.
On the other hand I can appreciate the frustration felt by many registrants.
Being forced to provide the infamous "supporting documentation" for each and every new domain name could be seen as having a very negative impact on the growth of ecommerce in Ireland.
Whether that perception is valid or not is debatable.
If you have a valid reason to register a domain name providing the documentation shouldn't be that arduous a task.
Unlike .com there are still literally thousands of excellent names available. If you have a look at some of the recently deleted domains you might find inspiration.
Want to setup a photography business? Album.ie is currently available to register
Or maybe you are an ET fan? Alien.ie is up for grabs, or at least it was when I looked a minute ago!
One of the strong points of the IE namespace is also its perceived weakness.
Being a "managed" registry end users should have some comfort and security when they interact with a website using the .ie extension. Security, however, is not without its price.
In the .com world it is arguably "too easy" to register a domain, provide false details and setup a scam. If you want to do the same thing in IE namespace you'd have to be willing to put in a lot more work!
Paul, our overworked and under appreciated CTO (who also happens to be my business partner) has been beavering away on enabling more cool stuff for the VPS hosting solutions.
One of the most requested features over the past few days has been support for more linux distributions.
Since there are a LOT of linux distributions we had to focus on the more important and popular ones, so Debian was pretty much top of the list.
You can now order Debian VPS (without plesk) via the online shop.
Rest assured that we do plan on adding more linux distributions, but as the old adage goes - Rome wasn 't built in a day, so we'd have to humbly ask you to bear with us.
Of course you don't have to wait if you don't want to, but hopping up and down won't speed things up...
Speaking of linux distros ...
We probably won't be adding support for Gentoo for some time if ever - sorry!
And now to distract you with a pretty image:
Of course it's more than just pretty.
With the virtual server solution powered by Parallels you can easily manage your virtual server (with full root access) from within the control panel. Want to reboot it or even stop it? How about a simple mouse click?
And if you break your VPS beyond recognition you can easily reinstall it from scratch and start all over. (I think I've broken mine about 4 times in the last 48 hours !!)
I'll probably post some screenshots or a screencast of the system when I get a chance.
But if there's any topic you'd like to see covered do let us know via the comments
We have finally launched the first set of new products and services that we've been working on for months.
As of last night Blacknight VPS hosting is open for business.
The new VPS hosting is the perfect solution for people who want to run custom setups without incurring the costs of dedicated hardware.
For example if you want to experiment with JSP, Ruby on Rails, Light HTTPD or want to install custom DLLs on Windows.
With a VPS you have full control. The only limits are your imagination and your credit card limit!
What's a VPS?
VPS stands for virtual private server.
It's hard to put it into really simple terms, but it's a way to give you the control and flexibility of a dedicated server at a fraction of the price.
What are Blacknight offering?
We're offering a full range of Windows Server 2003 64 bit and Centos 5 (Linux) based virtual servers.
Can I get a control panel for this?
Yes. All VPS servers come with the Virtuozzo Power Panel which gives you control over the basic operations of your VPS.
If you're not comfortable managing your server over SSH / RDP then you can opt to get Plesk as well.
What about other linux distros?
We'll be adding other popular Linux distributions in the coming weeks. For the moment we're offering the most popular alternative to RedHat Enterprise
Will you be offering Windows Server 2008?
We intend to offer it as soon as it is viable ie. fully supported and tested
The entire system is securely hosted in one of Ireland's leading data centres, Interxion in Dublin, Ireland.
In the last few months we've mentioned a lot of upgrades and improvements to our network. Part of the reason for doing all this was to make way for the rollout of our Parallels network.
If anyone has any feedback we'd really love to hear it.
Let us know in the comments or if you'd prefer discretion email management@blacknight.com
We informed you some time ago of an upcoming upgrade to our billing / control panel system.
You will probably receive an email from us later today regarding our billing system.
The text of the email is below:
Dear XXX
As you may know we are currently deploying a new billing and control panel system.
In order to facilitate the migration we would appreciate your help.
Please follow the link below to create your new control panel login.
NB: We will not ask you for any personal information at any time.
To create your new control panel login, please visit
Should you encounter difficulties please contact support@blacknight.com
--
Regards
Team Blacknight
http://www.blacknight.com
Once you get this email you will be able to setup your new login for our new billing system which will be going live very soon.
If you have any queries or issues please let us know.
NB: This change affects ALL Blacknight clients
If you want to know about any service affecting maintenance, technical updates or anything else of a technical nature, we recommend that you check out our new Technical Blog.
The site is hosted outside our core network (we don't even use our own nameservers just to be 100% safe!) and is part of our backup / contingency plans for emergency situations.
While our network uptime has been and hopefully will continue to be exemplary there's no reason to be lazy. We need to make sure that we have a system in place in case there is an issue NOT after the issue arises.
You can subscribe to the site's RSS feed OR to the email alerts.
Your choice :)
You can sign up for the email alerts by filling out the form below:
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
If you're not an existing Blacknight client this post isn't going to be that interesting or relevant to you, so you might want to move along...
The short version of this post:
We'll be emailing you to get you to choose a new username for the new control panel and billing system. The email will be clearly identified as coming from us and we won't be asking you for any sensitive information (ie. it won't be a phish!)
And for those with more patience ...
As some of you know we are currently working on a new shiny hosting system which is going to make your lives better and cure the world's ills (marketing speak gone mad! I know!).
If you can get past the marketing blurb one important fact remains. We will be moving away from Modernbill before too long. While it has served us well over the last few years our relationship has had its ups and downs, so now it only seems fair that we part our ways.
Now we know that migrating people to new systems can be disruptive and we also know how annoying it is when you're forced to use an insanely complicated username and password pair.
So our little elves (forgive the terrible metaphors!) have devised simple solution.
If you are an existing client of ours you will be getting an email at some point in the next few weeks. Within that email will be the basic details you need to choose your new username for the new billing system. It will all be quite painless we hope (and pray!).
In any case if you have any questions do let us know.
When is this going to happen?
I can't give a fixed date just yet, as we're still ironing out some issues and I hate making promises that I can't deliver on.
We're hiring staff at the moment ... I've already mentioned some of the roles we need to fill and today I've got yet another one...
This time round its for an "experienced" *nix admin position.
Basically we've got loads of servers. They need lots of TLC ...
Here are the details:
Position: Unix Engineer
The Unix Engineer has a specific area of responsibility within the systems that comprise the Blacknight core service delivery infrastructure. He/she reports to the Support Supervisor. This role may require leadership of junior engineers. Close co-operation with the core systems engineers is essential.
Responsibilities associated with this role include, but are not limited to the following:
* Ensure that all Blacknight services run optimally; continuously monitor performance against published SLA targets; consistently strive for excellence and highest system uptimes
* Assume special responsibility for Unix/Linux-based service delivery systems:
* Shared unix web servers and mail servers
* Unix/Linux-based database servers
* Support to dedicated or co-located customers on Unix/Linux systems who have bought managed services
* Advanced dedicated server development
* Unix/Linux-specific backups
* Plan and implement future developments, such as systems upgrades, using detailed plans and scheduled upgrade or implementation cycles
* Maintain/upgrade current anti-virus, backup, and other management software on Unix/Linux systems;
* Support deployment of hardware, software, service, and maintenance of all information technology assets
* Maintain full security on all systems
* Some development of in house applications may be required
* Assist in resolving systems outages out-of-hours through participation in an engineer call-out roster
Skills / Knowledge
* Deep knowledge of networking protocols (DNS/IPsec/POP3/SMTP and TCP/IP in mixed operating system environments)
* Experience managing Linux and other open-source operating systems essential, scripting ability essential, experience with commercial Unix, such as Solaris, an advantage
* Familiarity with Quagga the open-source routing suite desirable
* Software development experience in PHP and/or PERL desirable
* Working knowledge of Windows-based server operating systems
* Ability to build, run, and scale most ISP services from source
* Experience with Java, Tomcat, JSP deployments, ability to deploy and support such deployments
* Extensive knowledge of project-based software upgrade plans, ability to plan, write, communicate, and execute project and/or test plans
* Excellent understanding of firewalls and network security essential; experience with management of and planning of deployments of Cisco PIX or Fortinet firewalls essential
* Disaster recovery planning/testing
* Hands-on experience of backup software essential
* hardware diagnostic skills would be desirable, be able to trouble shoot problems with servers to determine if a fault is software of hardware based and be able to use your own initiative to contact vendors for replacements where applicable
PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES:
* Excellent communication skills
* Must be forward thinking and have good planning skills
* Excellent troubleshooting, judgment, and decision-making skills
* High level of self-motivation and proven ability for self-study and learning on the job
* Flexible and dependable, On-call work and Out of hours duties may be required from time to time (this is paid extra)
* Team player
QUALIFICATIONS/ EXPERIENCE
* 3 years experience working in a similar role
Salary
* Negotiable, between € 28,000 and €35,000 plus benefits and depending on experience
EDIT: The job is based in our offices in Carlow ...
When I first setup Blacknight we were a very very very small operation without any staff, offices or anything else.
Nowadays we have a growing team and are constantly expanding.
Our offices are quite comfortable, though we're going to be extending them very soon.
We're currently looking for more staff to help us expand and grow and offer our clients quality service and support.
There are currently 4 positions open and it would be really nice if we could fill them.
On the technical side there are two roles.
One is technical support L1. In simple terms the L1 technical support role is the "frontline". You'd be dealing with our clients via email, phone and other methods (we're not using Livechat at present, but we may do...). It would be a junior position and in order to qualify you'd need to have a good balance of humour, patience and an interest in IT. You don't need to have a degree in IT. In fact you don't need a degree at all, though it would be helpful...
The other technical role is as "Data Centre Technician". I'll post the full job spec further down, but the basic outline is that you'd be working primarily in Dublin (Clondalkin and Park West) and liasing with clients and the rest of the team.
The other roles are on the sales team.
It's 2008. Ireland is part of the EU. It would be downright silly to not want to staff capable of communicating with our European neighbours. So we're looking for multilingual sales staff. The languages we'd be interested in would be (in no particular order): Spanish, French, German or Italian. However if you have other EU languages then do feel free to contact us.
The other sales role is "straight" sales.
Both sales roles are based in our offices in Carlow and the candidates would report directly to our sales manager.
So, without further ado, here are the details of the Data Centre Technician role:
Position: Data Centre Technician
The Data Centre Technician role would be suited to someone who has previously worked for a Data Centre/large corporate with 500+ server deployments. He/she reports to the Technical Director. This role will involve close co-operation with the deployment and sales teams regarding new/current and furture customer deployments.
Responsibilities associated with this role include, but are not limited to the following:
* Ensure that all Blacknight customer installs go smoothly and that there is ample space, power, hardware on site for each deployment; liase with hardware vendors regarding delivery of DC specific hardware; consistently strive for excellence.
* Provide hands and eyes support on-site when necessary during business hours
* Ensure that all customer subscribed services are setup within SLAs outlined in contracts.
* Plan and implement future developments, such as systems upgrades, using detailed plans and scheduled upgrade or implementation cycles
* Keep track of all deliveries to and from our two Dublin POPs.
* Support deployment of hardware, software, service, and maintenance of all information technology assets
* Assist in resolving systems outages out-of-hours through participation in an engineer call-out roster
Skills / Knowledge
* Basic knowledge of networking protocols (DNS/IPsec/POP3/SMTP and TCP/IP in mixed operating system environments)
* Experience managing Linux and other open-source operating systems ideal, scripting ability essential, experience with commercial Unix, such as Solaris, an advantage
* Cisco IOS experience, switch configuration and general Layer 2 topology awareness
* Hardware skills with Intel based servers from vendors such as Dell, HP and Intel.
* Meticulous care in deploying servers and all Blacknight, customer equipment and all network cabling.
* Attention to detail regarding keeping records up to date
* Disaster recovery planning/testing
* Hardware diagnostic skills would be desirable, be able to trouble shoot problems with servers to determine if a fault is software of hardware based and be able to use your own initiative to contact vendors for replacements where applicable
PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES:
* Excellent communication skills
* Must be forward thinking and have good planning skills
* Excellent troubleshooting, judgment, and decision-making skills
* High level of self-motivation and proven ability for self-study and learning on the job
* Flexible and dependable, On-call work and Out of hours duties may be required from time to time
* Team player
QUALIFICATIONS/ EXPERIENCE
* 1 year experience working in a similar role
Salary
* Negotiable, between € 23,000 and €27,500 plus benefits and depending on experience
If interested please send CV in RTF or PDF format with covering email to management@blacknight.com.
Recruitment agencies NOT welcome. Cold calls / emails from recruitment agencies in relation to these or any other vacancies will not be welcome and will be treated with contempt.
Much to my amazement we've made it through to the shortlist for this year's Irish blog awards!
The competition in the business blog category is particularly tough, but it was nice to have made it this far.
Best of luck to everyone!!
We've been active members of the Irish Internet Association for the last number of years and have been happy to sponsor several of their events in the past.
This year's event takes place in the Croke Park Conference Centre on Friday May 15th
This year the IIA's conference will be focussing on social networking and new media.
We'll be providing more details on the speakers and the rest of the day's details as soon as they are forthcoming.
At least two or three of our team should be at the event, so please do make yourselves known. There might even be a prize draw for something really cool and useful... If nothing else we'll definitely have a few hoodies and polo shirts to give away (they're really comfy!)
If you haven't done so already I'd recommend that you subscribe to our blog's feed to be kept up to date!
Next Saturday is a date that should be marked in every Irish web professional's calendar, as it marks the first "event" organised by the members of Irish Webmaster Forum. (You don't have to be a member to participate!)
Where?
Harbour Master, Mayor Street, IFSC, Dublin 1
When?
Saturday February the 9th. 7.30 PM til ...... I guess that's up to you!
The original thread that started it all off is here, but it's been mentioned on quite a few people's blogs and sites over the last few days.
Although I won't be able to attend due to prior engagements (translation - I have to go and see my mother before she disowns me and had arranged it beforehand) I'm hoping that some of our other staff may be able to make it, but even if they don't we'll be there in "spirit", as we're sponsoring the event.
I'll expect a full report with photos from the attendees!
DomainFest is being held in Hollywood in a couple of weeks and we're proud to be one of the sponsors.
The event is one of the most important in the calendar for people involved in the domain industry and, if last year's event was anything to go by, it should draw a very interesting crowd from the four corners of the globe.
Last year I got to meet people from every aspect of the industry, so I'm hoping that this year will be similar. I've spoken to several people over the last couple of months who plan on attending THIS event since they had such a good time last year.
Unlike a lot of other industry events I've been to DomainFest manages to mix the business and pleasure to provide an almost perfect cocktail. You can easily find yourself having a drink in the bar with an unassuming multi-millionaire if you're not careful!
Of course a conference wouldn't be a conference if it didn't have speakers and at least one keynote. Last year they had TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, while this year's line up includes John Battelle, whose name may be familiar to anyone involved in SEO.
The agenda for this year's event looks very interesting and I will try to post more details as soon as they become available.
Similar to last year's event there are two "tracks" available.
If you're a DomainSponsor client, then you can learn about some of their new products and services.
However if you're more interested in hearing and discussing the latest trends in the domain name industry then the main track will be the place to be.
The topics on the agenda include new TLDs, legal issues, portfolio management and the famous networking sessions.
Last year was the first time I'd ever been to a networking session that was so intense and so incredibly productive! It's like speed dating, except it's for business contacts!
My biggest concern, of course, is not to get too involved in the live auction! It would be oh so easy to spend large amounts of money when you see the preliminary list of domains that are going to be on offer.
I'll be flying out to LA towards the middle of next week, as I want to take a couple of days prior to the event proper. At least that way I won't be able to use the excuse of jetlag if I spend the company's profits on dodgy domain names!
If you're reading this in a web browser instead of an RSS reader you should notice that it's look and feel has changed quite a bit.
We're currently rolling out our new design and look.. Over the next few days we'll be upgrading all the public facing sections of our sites etc., to give you a new uniform look and feel...
Hopefully you all like green and black - it's purely coincidence that Green & Black are my favourite chocolates as well!
Anyhow we've updated the blog (that's here!) and the forum so far and the support area is next on the list
Thanks to the guys in Spoiltchild for the design and 2BScene for the implementation work
Our support area has been upgraded to the latest version of Kayako, which is the software we use to run it.
We'll be tweaking the settings, and customising the look and feel over the coming days, so don't be put off if it looks a bit different!
A few things may not have been transferred over during the upgrade, but they will be restored to all their glory over the coming days.. It will also give you a chance to get a first look at the new style design that we will be unveiling shortly. We hope you like it!
I mentioned the upcoming eNum event a couple of weeks ago.
I've just received details from them about the day's event and it sounds like it could be very interesting:
Venue: Gresham Hotel, O'Connell St, Dublin 1
Date: Wednesday 28th November 2007
Time: 4.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m. (followed by drinks and snacks)
here will be no charge to attend the information session.
(parking available; close to DART and LUAS)
Agenda:
* Welcome and Introduction (IENUM)
* ENUM in Ireland (IENUM)
* ENUM in Austria (IPA)
* ENUM in the UK (BT)
* How to become an ENUM registrar (IENUM)
* ENUM - an Irish implementation (Soft Telecom)
* ENUM – an industry-led policy perspective (ENUM Policy Advisory Board)
* Open forum - Q&A
Objectives of the session:
• Share the experiences of ENUM in Europe, and understand the various business models used by registrars
• Inform about the benefits to service providers of being an ENUM tier 2 registrar
• Show how to become an ENUM registrar
• Discuss technical implementation details of ENUM and VoIP
• Share experience of a practical business implementation in Ireland -
ENUM as a tool to connect remote sites
We've decided to extend the special offer on EU domains for the month of November.
You can register a .eu domain for a mere 5 euro!
Check out which dotEU domains are available by using our online search
Tomorrow morning personal IE domains will be made available for the first time.
We've been accepting registration requests for the last few weeks, so tomorrow morning at zero hour we will be submitting the queued requests to the IE Domain Registry.
If you haven't ordered a personal IE domain then you still have time, though obviously your choices will be more restricted if your surname is common.
For those of you who have already submitted your registration requests and sent us in the documentation you can sit back and relax. If we need anything more from you our sales team will be in touch.
Of course if there is a large volume of requests there will be delays. We've been warned by the IEDR to expect delays, so we must ask you to please be patient.
If you have any queries do not hesitate to contact our sales staff, but please bear in mind that the volume of queries may result in there being a longer delay in replies than is normal.
We've dropped the price on .eu domains for the rest of this month to a mere 5 euro!
You can place your order online via our website and your .eu will be up and running in minutes.
We've been an accredited registrar for .eu domains for the last couple of months, although we hadn't put our accreditation fully live until this morning.
The next ICANN meeting is being held in Los Angeles, California.
Although the meeting doesn't officially start until the Monday there will be meetings and events over the weekend as well.
I'll be attending again, as there are quite a few topics of interest on the table.
If you're interested in the meeting schedule, then it's available on the site.
The meeting will also include a special event in honour of Vint Cerf who has served ICANN since the beginning.
When: Wednesday 17th of October @ 22:30 hours
What:
Firewall Upgrade. We're moving our colocation and dedicated server
customers out from behind the current HA pair of firewalls. We've
indicated recently on our blog that we bought 4 new Cisco ASA firewalls
and the time has arrived to install them.
Who will be affected:
Both of our firewalled networks will be affected by this. Firstly
our shared hosting firewall will be moved to a new IP address on the
WAN side to facilitate VPN configurations for our colocation and dedicated customers.
Secondly the new ASAs will be put in place and they will replace the current
firewalls and access routers for these customers.
We estimate around 30 minutes to an hour to move the shared hosting firewall
and around another 30 minutes to an hour to facilitate the new firewall
install. This includes all the cabling work etc that will need to be done.
We will also allow a further hour for testing of both networks, so we're looking
at a maximum of 3 hours for this work to be completed.
Summary:
All colocation, dedicated and shared hosting customers will be affected by this outage.
We mentioned the pending "death" of php4 some time ago.
It now seems that some people have got together to help push the move to php5 forward and have set a deadline of sorts.
The "go php5" site lists software projects that support php 5.2 and greater natively ie. without "dirty hacks" or any other messing about.
As I mentioned previously, most scripts should work properly under php 5, but there will always be exceptions!
If you'd like to find out more about why switching to php5 makes sense have a look at their FAQ.
The idea behind this is to give people that extra "push":
PHP version 5 adds a number of new features and design changes that make developing robust, secure, feature-rich software faster and easier. Those features do not exist in older versions of PHP 4, however, and many are very hard to emulate. Such features include fast and easy XML support for improved web services, better timezone handling, vastly improved database tools and input tools to make PHP applications more secure, and many others.
Projects that support PHP 4 cannot make use of those newer features, however. That means projects have to choose between supporting PHP 4, which has been in maintenance-only mode for over three years, or enabling modern web applications and services. For a long time many projects have chosen to support PHP 4 because of the large number of web hosts running PHP 4. Unfortunately that has resulted in a "chicken and egg" problem where web hosts have no incentive to upgrade to PHP 5, which means PHP developers can't use PHP 5's new functionality even if they want to.
By announcing that many leading open source projects will drop legacy support for PHP 4 at a fixed later date, we believe we can break that cycle and encourage web hosts to upgrade and allow open source developers to build faster, more secure, more powerful web applications.
Now if only we could persuade people to stop using MS SQL 2000 and FrontPage!!
Eurid, which is the registry in charge of the .eu domain, contacted all their registrars, including us, earlier today to announce a major change to the way they handle DNS updates.
At present .eu DNS servers update 5 times a day.
From 12 on October 9th the DNS will move to dynamic updates ie. changes will be instant.
This also means that the time lapse between a registration or change will be a lot faster (bearing in mind the distributed nature of DNS etc.,)
The announcement text is below for reference purposes:
The switch to dynamic updates, announced earlier this year, will be taking place on Tuesday 9 October at 12:00PM Belgian time. At that moment, .eu DNS servers will cease to update 5 times a day and begin updating instantaneously in response to changes as they occur. Please be sure to inform your customers of the change as this will affect certain services (e.g. website and email) since domain names will become active as soon as they are registered. We also remind everyone that while it is currently possible to correct any mistakes you have unintentionally made before the next scheduled update takes place, any mistakes made after dynamic updates have been implemented will be effective immediately. Conversely, any unintentional mistakes can be corrected immediately as well.
Most of the main domain registries use a similar system, so there won't be any tangible impact on the way things work, apart from them working faster!
If anyone has any queries let us know
Voting has now opened in the 2007 Irish Internet Association Net Visionary Awards.
I've been nominated under both Internet Entrepreneur and the Online Trader categories, so any and all votes would be appreciated!
There's also quite a few other names on the list that are familiar to us here at Blacknight. They belong to friends, business partners, clients and acquaintances. I wish them all the best of luck!
Personal IE domains will be available from October 31st 2007.
Basically if you want to register yourname.ie you will be able to do so after October 31st.
Since we expect that there will be a high demand for these domains we have put in place a queuing mechanism.
How will this work?
Our development team have put together a queuing system to hold the orders until October 31st.
Any orders for personal IE domains placed between now and October 31st at 8am will be submitted to the registry on the "go live" day.
What happens if two people want the same domain?
Domain registrations are on a first come first served basis. We will be submitting the requests to the IEDR in the order in which they were received. We cannot offer ANY guarantees (neither can anyone else)
What if someone else orders the domain from another company?
As already mentioned it's "first come, first served".
What if my chosen name is taken on the "go live" day?
We will offer people the opportunity of registering an alternative personal domain
Is Blacknight's system better than other?
Other companies have also setup queues, but only one or two of them have their servers physically in the same data centre as the IEDR.
Some of the other companies don't even have servers in Ireland, so their connections to the IEDR's API servers will be significantly slower.
If you'd like to find out what people are getting upto in the wonderful world of mobile devices and the mobile web, then Mobile Monday is the place for you.
On Monday next, September 24th Mobile Monday Demo Night will take place in The Hairy Lemon, which is in central Dublin (map)
Several companies will be showing off their latest creations so it should be good fun.
As we're promoting .mobi domains at present it's only natural that we also take the time to promote mobile web related stuff, so we'll be sponsoring the event.
More info here
Just got this email from the IEDR:
It has once again come to the attention of the IEDR that a company operating under the name “Internet Register Ireland” is in the process of contacting businesses with registered .ie domain names by post and by fax, soliciting them to register their domain name with the “Internet Register Ireland”. The “Internet Register Ireland”, a German based company will request you to fill out their form and return it to them signed. It should be noted that they charge an excessive fee of approximately €958 for the registration of the .ie domain name in their database.
We would like to reassure all of our customers that no such organisation has been authorised to act on behalf of the IEDR. If you are contacted in this manner we would recommend that you disregard this letter and advise your customers to be aware of this activity.
The IEDR are responding to enquiries from concerned domain holders, by recommending them to contact an official IE Reseller if they require any further Internet services for their website.
One of things that I have a love / hate relationship are servers. For the MD of a hosting company that's probably an odd thing to say.
I love the fact that we have so many.
I don't love the fact that they cost so much - the numbers involved get a bit silly when you buy as many as we do!
We get a lot of our hardware from Dell.
At the moment we are working on a project which needs quite a bit of hardware, so we're currently taking delivery from Dell by the van load.
We got a van load of servers today, so at lunchtime Paul Kelly, our CTO, took this photo of some of the boxes stacked up in our warehouse (that's another day's story!)
For the geekier types - you can probably work out that a lot of the smaller boxes are rail kits, while the bigger boxes are for rack mountable servers.
The photo was taken with a Nokia N95 if you are interested :)
The IE Domain Registry have finally released details of the policy change on personal domains which I've mentioned in the past. (For a long rant please see my personal blog)
We will be offering personal IE domains from October 31st 2007 onwards.
For clarity I am republishing the full text of the IEDR's press release:
The IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the managed registry for Ireland’s dot-ie domain names, today announced the relaxation of the rules for registering personal dot-ie domain names for individuals. This policy relaxation comes into effect following full consultation with the dot-ie reseller community and industry organisations.
Registration of personal domains will be available to individuals from Wednesday, 31st October, 2007. This follows a seven week notice period, to allow time for sole traders, professionals, politicians, trademark holders who have not already registered their .ie Internet address, to do so under existing non-personal domain categories.
The introduction of personal dot-ie domain names is a result of the increased popularity of social networking and blogging sites and the increasing number of individuals who are coming online.
The registration of personal domain names will be open to all individuals who can authenticate a claim to the domain name and who have a real and substantive connection to the island of Ireland. To authenticate a claim, a copy of an identification document is required, for example an Irish utility bill or driving licence. The name on the document supplied must match exactly the domain name applied for. This requirement ensures that the status of Ireland’s dot-ie namespace, as the world’s second safest country code top level domain, is maintained and protected in the future. Applications will be time-stamped to ensure fairness and transparency of the process.
Commenting on the introduction of dot-ie personal domain names, Mr. David Curtin, Chief Executive of the IE Domain Registry said, “The IEDR is pleased to announce the relaxation of rules for personal dot-ie domain names. To maintain the integrity of the dot-ie domain namespace, which has negligible levels of cyber squatting and cyber crime, applicants will need to authenticate their claim by providing matching supporting documentation such as an Irish passport or utility bill.
This limited registration policy relaxation comes into effect following consultation with dot-ie resellers. The introduction of personal domain names was first proposed to internet service providers three years ago, but there was little interest due to expected low levels of demand. Since then the broadband take-up and popularity of social networking has created a desire for a personal presence on the Internet, which in turn will have a positive effect on the level of demand for personal dot-ie domain names. The IEDR has also significantly reduced its prices, which have fallen by 50% since 2003 and introduced key system changes that facilitate fast, automated and real time registration, which has reduced resellers’ process costs.”
Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be doing an occasional series of posts on making the most of your dotmobi domain.
If anyone has any suggestions or ideas that they'd like to share please let me know!
The topics I intend to cover will include things like building a site, checking it, making money from it and any other topics that people suggest to me.
What's the deal?
We are running a sale on dotmobi (.mobi) domains starting today.
How much will they cost?
Registrations of .mobi domains will cost a mere 10 euro per annum, so you can make big savings by registering your domain for up to 10 years.
What is .mobi (dotmobi)?
Dotmobi is the domain for the mobile web.
If a company publicises a .mobi site it should work on your mobile device and you should be able to make full use of it.
How can I test my dotmobi site?
You can test your .mobi site to see if it will work properly on a mobile phone using the ready.mobi suite of tests.
Who is behind dotmobi?
Dotmobi is supported by some of the biggest names in mobile and general technology including Ericsson, Google, GSM Association, Hutchison (3), Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, TIM, Visa and Vodafone.
How can I register a .mobi?
You can check if your chosen domain is available by doing a search here
Starting Monday 10th September 2007 we'll be running a special promotion on new dotmobi domain registrations.
I've mentioned dotmobi in the past.
It's the domain for the mobile web.
Forget about WAP - think of browsing and using the internet and online services on your mobile device - be that a Nokia tablet, an n95 or even on an iphone.
It doesn't have to be a painful experience!
In any case we'll provide more details of the offer on Sunday night / Monday morning.
We're happy to be sponsoring the .net Magazine Awards 2007. The awards, which have 16 categories, have been running for several years and attract quite a bit of interest internationally.
We had a choice to make when it came to the sponsorship and it wasn't an easy one. Which category did we want to be associated with?
In the end I had to follow my heart and go with "Standards Champion", which is described as being awarded for:
the best use of accessible design in 2007. Nominees will be judged on standards compliance, originality, and downright sexiness.
I've always been a fan of web standards, as they make life easier for all parties concerned.
While it may be difficult to be 100% standards compliant 100% of the time, there's no reason why a website cannot aspire to standards compliance all of the time.
There's a subtle, but important, difference here. If you give it your best then you can feel satisfied that you have made an honest effort to reach out to as many web users as possible. (Why do you think we use text based captcha on our company sites?)
The full list of categories are (in no particular order):
Who is judging it?
Well Future Publishing are the event organisers (they own .net magazine), so they have a lot of clout and this is reflected in the calibre of the judging panel
We'll publish more information on the awards as and when we receive them.
So get voting!
The IE Domain Registry will be conducting maintenance on their systems on the mornings of Tuesday September 4th and Wednesday September 5th 2007.
From 6 am to 9 am no orders for new IE domains will be processed.
Our accounts department will be closed on Thursday and Friday this week, as one of our staff, Leona, is tying the proverbial knot. Since most of the office is invited to the wedding on Thursday we'll be closing accounts on Thursday and Friday. (Yes if you want to pay us we'll be able to manage it!).
On the subject of weddings this year has been very busy chez Blacknight with three members of the team getting married.
George, our sales manager, tied the knot earlier this summer. Carla, one of our programmers got married this weekend and now we have Leona following suit.
We wish them all the best!
If you are a mobile user then you might be interested in adding the Blacknight widset to your account.
It's a nice little alternative to using an RSS reader to get the latest news, tips and rants from team Blacknight!
More info on the Widsets site
Over the next few weeks and months we'll be rebranding slightly.
It's not going to be one of those "huge" rebranding exercises where we change the company name, fire all the staff and move our offices to Los Angeles or anything crazy like that.
We'll simply start using a couple of the domains that we have more actively than the blacknight.ie domain that we have been using for the last few years.
Unless one of our beloved sysadmins does something really silly none of you will really notice anything different, until the new website is launched.
Why are we doing this?
For a couple of very simple reasons.
Over the past few years we have been working hard on building up our business in Ireland, Europe and further afield.
We now have clients from every major country in the world and while we may love our .ie domain it may not portray the image that our clients need.
We would have opted for .com, but we have one of those "waiting in the wings" for another project that will be launched later this year (hopefully)
So for the moment we will start pushing blacknight.eu.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the best way of promoting a domain is to use it, so that's what we intend doing.
Of course we may be stark raving bonkers and this could be the worst marketing decision I've made so far this year, but I can live with that :)
Any feedback is, as always, welcome
Our team of networking engineers like to keep our network running smoothly and I am happy to say that they do a very good job of it overall.
Of course this means that from time to time they have to upgrade and patch things.
So between 27th and 28th of August we will be doing maintenance on our Cisco switches, which involves upgrading the IOS on some of the devices.
The affected switches will have to be rebooted, so there could be a loss of connectivity for up to a minute as the devices reboot.
Since we're doing this in the middle of the night it should not affect many clients as it is set to happen between 2200 and 0200 GMT. If you are located in the US for example that would be 1600 to 2000...
In any case there's more info on the forum
BarCamp Galway takes place on 22nd September and we're delighted to be sponsors.
We may even get to send someone to attend the event! Though I won't confirm that just yet, as it seems to curse any chance of it happening if I do!
In any case you can find out more on the event's blog or on the wiki.
So far to date we seem to have sponsored every barcamp event that's been held in the 32 counties!
Over the next couple of months a new domain extension will go live - dot asia (.asia) which is aimed at representing the businesses and people of the Asia Pacific region.
We'll be providing information on the registration requirements over the next few days as well as pricing and timelines.
Why would you want to register a .asia domain?
If you are trademark holder then you should do so to protect your brand.
If you are not a trademark holder but are serious about doing business in the Asia Pacific region, then .asia is the domain for you.
I'll be posting more information on this new domain name in the coming days and weeks, so please keep an eye on this site!
Nominations are now open for the Irish Internet Association's annual awards - the Net Visionaries. The timeline and details are available on their site.
We were involved with the awards for the last couple of years and I would consider it to be the only true internet award in Ireland at present as it is well respected within industry circles.
If you would like to nominate someone then you can do so directly here
The categories cover both the technical and business side of the internet business and you DO NOT have to be a member to nominate or get nominated.
Due to work pressures I wasn't able to attend the event we sponsored down in Cork yesterday evening.
Damien tells me that there was a good turnout, so I'm delighted.
The IT@Cork blog has a review of the event as well.
I was interviewed recently for an article published by Warren News. We're republishing the article here with the permission of Warner Communications News:
Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) .us and .eu were launched to great expectations, but several
years on, some wonder whether they will ever achieve their potential. There are claims the .us name space is
not being managed or marketed effectively, and that .eu suffers from too little exposure and too much
"warehousing" by domain name speculators. Registries EURid and NeuStar said they're successful but acknowledge
that their domains could be more popular.
With the .us registry contract up for possible rebid by NTIA, .info registry Afilias and registrar Go-
Daddy teamed up as the Domain Name Alliance Registry to submit a quotation (WID Aug 1 p5). They criticized
NeuStar's management of .us, saying it lost ccTLD market share over the past two years and that only
one in five websites contains original content.
With somewhere around one million registrations, .eu ranks ninth of all country codes, behind the Netherlands,
China and Argentina, the alliance said. NeuStar allowed .us to lose ground in a rapidly expanding market, the
alliance said, "beaten by aggressive competitors" when it should be growing at least as fast as the market in general.
The .us namespace is subject to several policies and procedures unique to it, such as requiring registrants to
have a legitimate nexus with the U.S. and filtering out certain unacceptable words, Keith Drazek, NeuStar senior
manager, industry and government relations, told us. The restrictions tend to weed out many of the abusive registration
practices, such as spammers, who go to other TLDs, such as .info, inflating the size of their registration databases,
he said. That is one of many arguments for why .us has not grown as quickly as other domains, he said.
Drazek stressed that Ne