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News, tips and reviews from one of Ireland's leading hosting companies |
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.
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.
This article was originally published in April 2008's edition of Computers in Business. Since I wrote it and retain the copyright I am republishing it here:
People are always publishing articles on how to make the most out of your website or how to turn your website into “the solution” for your business.
I can’t see the point in even trying if you can’t get the basics right.
What are the basics?
The obvious things.
What does your company sell or provide?
Communicate this to me clearly in language I can understand. If I need a dictionary to read your website then you’re being too obtuse. Spell it out
for me so I can see.
How can I contact you?
Put your contact details where they can be seen without forcing me to search for them or squint.
Instil a sense of trust.
Mobile phone numbers, throwaway email addresses and PO Box numbers may suit you, but they do not give potential clients a sense of security.
Where are you based?
There is nothing more annoying than a website promoting a really cool and useful service WITHOUT telling me if it’s available in my area. (Sorry for yelling, but it’s really frustrating!!) If your service is only available in Co. Cork that’s fine, but don’t tell me it’s a “national service” on one page and restricted to Cork only on another.
Another basic thing to do is check if your website displays correctly in the most commonly used browsers. Of course if your site is “standards compliant” and can pass the W3C’s validator test then you won’t have to worry too much, so maybe investing a little bit more now will pay dividends later?
I hate acronyms.
Of course they're impossible to avoid if you work in IT, but that doesn't mean I have to like them.
RAID is one of those acronyms that really wrecks my head.
Not RAID itself which means simply Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but the different types of RAID array that can exist.
RAID, in case you didn't know, is a way of improving redundancy and performance in servers by using multiple disks. Of course you don't have to use multiple disks, but if you don't you will run the risk of losing data.
A few months ago someone posted a very nice simple graphic that explained the differences between the various types of RAID arrays.
Taken from: http://www.epidauros.be/raid.jpg
One of our technical staff sent me a link earlier today to a bash.org quote which sums up the potential issues with single disk servers very nicely:
sterano: Whats the difference between Raid_0 and Raid_1? Steve: In Raid_0 the zero stands for how many files you are going to get back if something goes wrong.
Moral of the story - use more than one physical disk :)
Verisign, the company that manages the .com registry, will be increasing the price of .com domains by 7% again this year.
The price increase affects all registrars.
We'll be keeping an eye on how pricing develops and if this involves any change to our own pricing we will let you know.
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:
For the last couple of years I've been writing a monthly column for PC Live, which is one of Ireland's consumer electronics magazines. Since January of this year I've also been writing a short column for the Sunday Business Post's monthly ICT supplement, Computers In Business.
Since neither publication makes all of my articles available online and the content is mine ie. I retain the copyright, I've decided to republish the articles here. I may not republish all of them, as there is overlap at times between what goes into print and what gets put on the company blog. In other cases the content may not lend itself to this medium as it wa time sensitive ..
If anyone has any feedback on this please post a comment below
Thanks!
We're currently working behind the scenes on a nice new shiny set of hosting services. (I've wanted to say "shiny" all day - sorry!)
One of the things that the new system should be good at delivering is pre-installed scripts alla installatron, which is our current solution.
Of course it won't be installatron, so it won't offer the current range of applications. It could offer a similar range of applications, but it would be nice to know which applications people would like to see...
Which applications are you interested in using?
Which applications can you live without?
Why do you use some scripts and not others?
Any feedback you can give us would be fantastic!
And if you are a developer you can make your applications available to our customers!!! If you're interested in finding out more email management@blacknight.com
We've been offering Wordpress via an automated installer for quite some time and it's proven to be very popular.
Unfortunately Wordpress' use of SQL is far from optimal and this can easily lead to a popular blog or site causing serious issues on our servers (or anyone elses for that matter!).
We don't like enforcing certain policies on our users, but we're not left with much choice.
Due to the recent issues regarding busy WordPress websites affecting the performance of shared hosting servers, we are contacting all of our customers that are using WordPress and asking them to please look into enabling caching.
I just wish the Wordpress developers would listen to reason and enable saner caching by default.
There are two possible solutions:
- use a blogging / CMS solution that is a bit "saner" in terms of SQL and / or caching content (You'll notice that this blog has always been running on MT for this very reason!)
- install one of the available Wordpress plugins that will provide caching
There are currently two caching plugins available that we know of:
What the caching does is take the load away from the MySQL / PHP processing so that the web server (Apache) only has to serve static content, which it does very well!
If you do not enable WP Cache (or similar) there is far greater chance that if your WordPress site experiences a period of high visitors or similiar, then it could cause issues on the server.
As per our Acceptable-Usage Policy, we might have to suspend any site that causes issues like this. Putting it simply - if you're not being a considerate neighbour we might have to shut you down until you behave.
Setting up caching should only take a couple of minutes and if you have any issues or need assistance our support forum is available, as is our helpdesk
EDIT: Gary, from our technical support team, has put together a short document to help people install and configure WP Cache. You can get it from here
The expression "there's no such thing as a free lunch" may seem a little overused at times, but scam artists of all shapes and sizes are still "in the wild".
In some cases being a small bit more cautious or actually reading the fine print could avert disaster (or at least go a long way to avoid headaches).
It doesn't really matter which "offer" I am referring to.
It could be Domain Registry Of America (DROA) whose modus operandi consists of sending thousands and thousands of nicely laid out and very official looking letters to domain registrants. If you get one - dump it. If you don't want to dump it immediately, by all means open it and read it. But please read ALL of it.
One of the offers doing the rounds at the moment is from Euro Business Guide.
There are a couple of things about it that raise red flags:
- they're doing it via email en masse (basically spamming)
- the wording is more than a bit misleading
If you sign up with them WITHOUT reading the fine print you could be liable for a EUR 965 charge.
Every year I usually organise some kind of sale in the new year. We usually offer a discount on domain registrations or something similar.
This year I decided to take a slightly different angle.
Instead of offering a discount to everyone I thought we'd offer a BIG discount to our existing clients (and subscribers to our newsletter).
Of course we like getting new business, but it's about time we gave something extra to our existing clients.
So keep an eye on your inbox.
The email with the details will be "winging" its way to you at some point over the next 3 days.. It's worth the wait!
And if you aren't getting our special newsletters already it's not too late to sign up!!!
Sometimes it's our clients who come up with the cool little ideas.
The latest one I came across is a domain search extension for Firefox which will do a search for available domains on the Blacknight site.
You can get it here. Developed by Weeno Media and mentioned here
Very cool!
If you're going to focus all your energies and money on developing your online presence then there are some really simple things that you need to get right.
If you were to rent a small shop in the centre of any town or city you would have to pay "top dollar", but if your main activity is centred around your website you don't need to worry about that particular expense.
However you do need to make some small investment in your actual online brand, as it's far too easy for someone else to grab it if you're not careful.
I'm always amazed at how little attention companies pay to basic online brand protection and, speaking from personal experience, it's an expensive lesson to learn after the fact!
When I first setup Blacknight I made a number of rather silly mistakes with our online branding. I didn't check that all the domains were available to register - hindsight's a wonderful thing, isn't it?
Acquiring domains when they've already been registered by someone else can be awkward if not impossible. And even if it's not awkward it can be expensive.
If you're going to start from scratch then you need to check if the name you've chosen fits some basic criteria:
How many times have you heard an advert on the radio for some "cool" product or service and then not been able to find the company's website?
It's happened to me far too often. In some cases it's because the company name is odd and forgettable.
In other cases it's not clear how the domain name is spelt.
When it comes to registering the domain names a bit of common sense goes a long way. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to register a couple of extra domain names NOW than get into litigation about them later.
How much does a legal letter cost?
How much does a WIPO dispute cost?
If you compare those costs against the costs of registering a couple of extra domain names it's obvious which option to go for.
If you're an EU company I'd strongly urge you to get the following extensions:
com,net,org,info,biz,eu and co.uk
If your company is based in Ireland, then getting the .ie domain won't hurt!
Of course if you need to expand your brand into other markets in the EU then you probably need to get a few more extensions, but if you get the ones I mentioned now you'll save yourself a lot of headaches and MONEY !!
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
In order to further facilitate communication between us and our clients I've setup a Jaiku channel.
If you have a Jaiku account simply join the channel to receive updates from us, including the latest posts from this blog.
If you're already "connected" to me, then you won't really need to this, but there's nothing to stop you !
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
(I'm only showing the contact parts)
The administrative contact for the domain is clearly listed as me, while the second contact (tech-c) shows Blacknight, as I obviously register my domains with my own company.
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?
Zend just sent me an email about a webinar that might be of interest to our clients:
Migrating from PHP4 to PHP5 - Presented by Ivo Jansch, CTO iBuildings
This webinar is aimed at both developers and IT managers who are still using PHP4 and considering migration to PHP5. This session will address the question, “What are the benefits of migrating to PHP5 and equally importantly, what are the risks?” Following this webinar you will be in a better position to make an informed decision between PHP4 and PHP5.
I've always liked being able to support Irish companies. I don't like supporting them for the sake of it, as that's just plain silly. But if an Irish company offers a product or service that is excellent, then I have no qualms about recommending it to my friends and to our clients and partners.
Why wouldn't I?
That's the case with Infacta.
They're based in Sligo, in the west of Ireland, which is well away from Dublin and the other urban centres of Ireland. Yet they've built up a really cool suite of software and services that help companies communicate with their clients. Although I use Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS X for a lot
Group Surveys is a really cool online survey tool. It might not be free, but there's nothing wrong with paying for a quality service, is there? However if you're a Blacknight client you can get some free credits to get you started. How's that?
What can it do?
It's a versatile and easy-to-use application for conducting online surveys. You can create online surveys in minutes using custom designs and multiple question and answer types. A link to your survey can be placed in your website, blog or e-mail, making distribution simple and flexible.
If you want to get started follow this link to the "special" Blacknight page. Happy surveying!
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
If you want to get your personal IE domain then remember we'll be taking pre-orders up until the "go live" date.
Unfortunately there seems to be some confusion about which domains are allowed and which ones aren't.
To start with, as is indicated on the order form, to pre-order personal IE domains you need to submit them as follows:
select the applicant class ‘Natural Person’ and the domain category ‘Personal Name’.
DO NOT try any other combinations. If you do your application will be rejected.
You cannot register your surname / family name.
You cannot register your first name.
While your friends may call you all sorts of interesting names you can only register names that you can provide documentation for.
What documentation is accepted?
If you are based in the republic:
Irish passport
Irish driver's licence
Irish revenue / social welfare document showing PPS number
Irish birth certificate
Irish marriage certificate
Irish utility bill (e.g.: NTL, Chorus, SKY / ESB, Airtricity / Bord Gais / Eircom / Vodafone, O2, Meteor, Three - bill pay phones only).
If you are based in Northern Ireland:
UK driver's licence with Northern Ireland address.
HM Revenue & Customs / Northern Ireland Social Security Agency document showing National Insurance number
Northern Ireland birth certificate
Northern Ireland marriage certificate
Northern Ireland utility bill (e.g.: NTL, Chorus, SKY, UTV Internet / NIE, Airtricity / British Gas / BT / Vodafone, O2, 3, T-Mobile, Orange, BT - bill pay phones only).
Where should I send the documentation?
All documentation should be sent to us either via fax or email.
Our fax numbers are:
+353 (0) 1 4811 763
UK Fax: 0845 280 088
US Fax: 213 232 3366
Please ensure that any documentation is clearly marked with the domain name in question.
DO NOT send us original documents via mail.
What format name(s) can I register?
Johnsmith.ie [first name / surname]
Johnpaulsmith.ie [first name / middlename / surname]
John-smith.ie [first name / hyphen / surname]
John-paul-smith.ie [first name / hyphen / middlename / hyphen / surname]
Johnpsmith.ie [first name / middle initial / surname]
John-p-smith.ie [first name / hyphen / middle initial / hyphen / surname]
Jsmith.ie [first initial / surname]
Jpsmith.ie [first initial / middle initial / surname]
Jp-smith.ie [first initial / middle initial / hyphen / surname]
J-smith.ie [first initial / hyphen / surname]
J-p-smith.ie [first initial / hyphen / middle initial / hyphen / surname]
Paulsmith.ie [middlename / surname]
Paul-smith.ie [middlename / hyphen / surname]
Psmith.ie [middle initial / surname]
P-smith.ie [middle initial / hyphen / surname]
NB: You will need to be able to provide documentation of the name chosen with the spelling chosen, so if you want to register johnnysmith.ie you will need a document in that name
While I may have a love-hate relationship with servers I simply dislike faxes and fax machines.
I can't get excited by them and simply consider them to be a waste of space and money.
Yes - we still have one in the office, but I've stopped using it for inbound faxes.
We had an issue several months ago where one of the telcos managed to cut off our fax lines with a digger for a few hours so we took our faxing online. I haven't looked back.
Not only can I get all my faxes in a handy electronic format (who needs expensive scanners?) for storage I can also send on the faxes to 3rd parties easily if needed.
So what?
Well you too can dump your cumbersome fax machine!
Signup for a free 30 day trial and choose from a multitude of localised numbers (we've got ones in the US and UK!)
No more worrying about expensive fax ribbons, splodgy printouts or simply mangled faxes... Not to mention the amount of paper you can get rid of..
Kiss your fax machine goodbye !! (Or turn it into a bookend!)
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.
There's been quite a bit of media coverage in the last few days about the upcoming relaxation of IEDR rules to allow people to register yourname.ie.
While some of the reporting hasn't been particularly inspired some of it has been quite misleading.
As of October 31st any Irish citizen or resident in Ireland will be able to register their name.
You will NOT be able to register ANY name you want post October 31st. You will only be able to register your given name or a variation thereof that you can prove (I'll post about that in more detail later).
However, if you are a published writer, artist (in the broadest sense of the word), politician or business person who actively trades using your own name at present you can register your name NOW. You do not have to wait until the end of October.
One of the examples that people have mentioned is politicians' names, such as bertieahern.ie - he's already got his domain name, so there's no point trying to get it. Even if he hadn't got it already he could get it before the end of October.
If you are a doctor, solicitor or other tradesman that trades using your name you can register your domain name today. You do not need to wait!
In case you haven't heard the cost of .com/.net/.info/.biz domains will be going up later this year.
I got an email from the registrar we currently use about the price increases last night, so I thought I'd share the news.
The price increase isn't welcome, but it comes from the domain registries NOT from ICANN or the registrars. Unfortunately the registrars have to pass on some of their costs to companies like ourselves (although we are an accredited registrar for several TLDs we still aren't accredited by ICANN).
We've always priced com/net/org/info/biz in a "sane" way. We've never been the cheapest in the world, but we've always been able to maintain our prices. This isn't going to change, though it does mean that our margins will be slightly tighter than before.
If you're used to registering domains directly with us, then you have nothing to worry about, as we don't intend to increase our prices in the foreseeable future.
If you're using other companies to register .com etc., then you may need to keep a watchful eye on their pricing. Some of the registrars have been pricing themselves so low that an increase will be inevitable. If you're using one of those registrars I'd recommend you look at renewing domains for multiple years now before the price increases kick in on October 14/15.
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.
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.
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!
I don't want to bore people with security, but unfortunately I have to keep coming back to it time and again...
Over the past few days there has been a spate of attacks on websites using the Joomla CMS (Content Management System)
If you are using Joomla we would urge you to check that you are using the most recent version available and if you aren't to upgrade.
Even if you cannot upgrade immediately we would urge clients to check that the configuration file is not writeable.
Since we still have a number of clients using MS SQL 2000 we have made available both myLittleAdmin and MyLittleBackup for the older platform
MyLittleAdmin is accessible here
I'll post details of MyLittleAdmin as soon as they are available
For MS SQL 2005 users please see our previous announcement
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.
We have been notified by clients of a new domain scam.
The emails come from a company calling themselves "Domain Renewal"
These emails are not from us and should be ignored. If you want to forward them to us please do.
The emails follow the following format:
It is time to renew your domain name www.domain.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your domain name www.domain.com will expire within 90 days.
You may renew your domain automatically with Domain Renewal. Click on the link in this
e-mail to renew the domain for another year. You should renew your domain as soon as
possible in order for it to continue to be registered in your name.
Click here if you wish to renew your domain
--------> http://www.domainrenewalonline.com/for.php?d=domain.com
As soon as we have received your payment, you will receive a confirmation that your domain
has been renewed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Services and information about Domain Renewal
Domain Renewal maintains domain addresses, and registers and consults companies in
relation to Internet domain ownership. We inform businesses about which domains are
registered, and remind them if a domain is due to expire, or when it is time to renew a domain.
If you want Domain Renewal to extend the domain for you, we ask you to click on the link in
this e-mail. If you do not wish to use your domain after the due date for renewal, you may
disregard this e-mail. When Domain Renewal extends your domain no information will be
changed in the “Whois” information section. The domain will be extended for 1 year. You will
therefore continue with your current supplier. You may also request your Internet Service
Provider to renew the domain for you. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate
to contact our customer service centre by sending an e-mail to
support@domainrenewalonline.com
DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK
The insecure website it takes you to will ask you for your credit card information and will try to charge you USD69 for the domain renewal. (We only charge EUR8.25)
If you have any queries about the status of domains registered through our services please feel free to contact us.
Our new UK telephone number is live.
If you are based in the UK you can now reach us on 0844 4849361
If anyone has any issues with it please let us know ASAP
PHP4 will be discontinued at the end of 2007.
The PHP developers have announced that they will no more releases of php4 after the end of 2007.
We've been rolling out php5 on both our Windows and Linux servers for the last few months and will be discontinuing support for php4 at the end of 2007.
Most popular 3rd party scripts should work fine on php5, but some older ones may have issues. We'd recommend that people look into upgrading their scripts to support PHP5, as they're probably vulnerable in other ways also.
If you have any queries about this please let us know.
Since we've had several queries about registering "personal" IE domains I felt it might be prudent to clarify matters.
First off - you currently CANNOT register a personal IE domain such as johndoe.ie
There has been a lot of discussion in the media surrounding personal IE domains (I may have contributed in no little part to this ...), but the important point keeps being missed.
Until the IEDR board makes its decision on the change it will not happen.
We are hoping that it will happen and happen soon, but the change has not been implemented yet.
With regards to what will be allowed:
You will be able to register your full name OR an accepted version of it.
So if your name was Michele Neylon (might as well use myself!) I could register micheleneylon.ie or michelejneylon.ie, as both forms of my name are documented.
I wouldn't be able to register:
micheneylon.ie or neylon.ie or any other derivatives, as none of them are valid and documented ie. I can't prove that they exist officially.
NB:It maybe possible to register all of the above names using other criteria, but I am addressing the specific personal name category.
If you are trading under your own name now is the time to register your IE domain.
Why?
It is highly likely that the IE Domain Registry will be amending the rules governing "personal" IE domains.
What does this mean?
Soon any Irish resident will be able to register theirname.ie ie. if your name is Pat Murphy, you will be able to register patmurphy.ie, as long as your official documents list your name as "Pat" and not "Patrick".
We'll make more announcements on the subject as the official changes are announced, but we would expect to see an IEDR policy change in the next 2 months.
If you want to get a "previously owned" IE domain then today is a good day for you.
If you check our deleted domain list you will see that it has updated as of midday today (or thereabouts) and now includes the latest IE domain deletions. If you qualify to register the domains you can do so immediately via our website.
It's Friday - treat yourself !
Since we run a firewalled network giving clients direct access to the MS SQL servers has always been a security issue.
With MySQL there are open source web frontends, such as PhpMyAdmin, that do a fantastic job at providing a web frontend to the database server. You don't need to be a hardcore DBA to manipulate your data, optimise or repair tables, take backups etc., etc.
But what about Microsoft SQL server?
While there are a couple of open source solutions out there none of them come even close to offering the levels of functionality needed.
So what could we do?
The solution lay in France with a little company called myLittleTools S.A.R.L..
They offer two web based products for MS SQL management:
This latest addition to our offerings goes well with our recent announcement of an increased number of databases with most of our ASP.net hosting plans (Windows 2003).
Are you spending too much on domains and hosting?
Do you feel that you are getting ripped off?
If you check out the pricing of domain names with some of the other Irish providers you will get a nasty shock.
Why on earth would anyone want to spend over €80 per annum on a .ie domain?
Or what about spending over € 20 on a .com?
That's madness - plain and simple!
Look at these prices and make up your own mind:
As one of the sponsors of the IIA conference we are able to offer our clients a reduced rate on the tickets.
Simply email events@iia.ie quoting "Blacknight rate" for details
Domains are big business.
Domains are big for business.
Regardless of whether you are looking at domain names from the aspect of a domain provider or simply that of a user eg. a company or hobbyist, keeping your domain name is never more important than when you lose it.
Like so many other things you don't really miss it until it's gone and if the loss of the domain is down to an incorrect email address, then you won't get that much sympathy.
Getting people to realise how important updating their email address(es) on a regular basis is not easy. It would be a lot nicer if it were to happen before an issue arose.
Why do I mention this?
I was speaking to Eamon McGrane about this for an article in today's Irish Times - Alertness needed to stay king of your domain (subscription needed)
Remember to keep your email address up to date for ALL your domain names. If you don't you risk losing your domain names!
One of the things that attracts people to the internet is possibly a hangover of the dotcom boom. People still believe that they can make their fortunes online without having to work hard.
While it may still be possible to make money online the days of not working hard, alas, are no more.
However that should not dissuade you!
We've mentioned selling custom tshirts via your website a couple of times in the past, as we partnered with SpreadShirt (watch this space for more partnership news!)
But what if you can't design?
There are plenty of other options open to you.
A couple of the more popular ones are Adsense and Text Link Ads.
Adsense is quite simple to use. All you need to do is sign up for an account and add some code to your website pages. When people click on the ads you earn money! Not that complicated, is it?
If you start using Adsense you'll soon find that there are thousands of websites and blogs dedicated to providing advice on how to make more money from it. There are even a couple of books on the subject!
Text Link Ads is slightly more complicated, but the rewards can be generous.
The basic concept is that text links ie. not graphic links, are valuable both in terms of traffic and seo, so you, as a website publisher, can make money from them.
The only downsides to TLA is that your site needs to be established and the system will not work with static HTML ie. you need to be using PHP, ASP or some other form of server-side scripting language to use the system.
If you're looking for tips and tricks on making money online you may want to check out the Irish Webmaster Forum, which is popular with Irish web professionals.
Earlier this week Rob Burke from Microsoft got in touch with us about Asp.net AJAX extensions.
It transpires that none of the Irish hosting companies were offering support for them (at least not officially).
Although we hadn't been supporting it officially it transpires that we had been running them on several of our Windows servers since late last year when they were still in beta.
We like to embrace new technologies wherever we can (bearing in mind any possible negative side-effects, naturally) so we were delighted to be able to work with Rob in getting it all working. You can see a demo of the Asp.net AJAX extensions here:
AJAX test site
So we can now happily say that we do offer Asp.net AJAX extensions!
Further coverage on Rob's blog as well as a mention on Paul's.
A number of our clients have reported receiving letters from a German company today called "Internet Register Ireland" which seems to be a trading name of DAD Deutscher Adressdienst GmbH.
The letter is nicely presented and includes a business reply envelope (all printed on recycled paper no less!).
See below for sample:
The issue arises in the smaller print at the bottom of the page.
If you sign and send in the letter you will be agreeing to pay them the sum of €958 for a "listing" on their "directory".
We would recommend clients to simply bin this letter.
If your website takes more than a couple of seconds to load then you could be losing business.
A recent study conducted by Akamai and Jupiter research shows that 4 seconds is the maximum delay that a potential shopper will put up with before going elsewhere.
We've probably all had this problem where a website seems to take aeons to load. In some cases it can be down to bad coding or an external website not responding quickly enough. In other cases it can be simply due to the website being hosted on a bad connection on the other side of the planet.
Here at Blacknight we have invested heavily over the past 12 months to ensure that websites load quickly for both Irish and international shoppers.
All our servers are on a resilient multi-homed network which peers with most of the Irish ISPs. Put in more simple terms, we've taken steps to make sure that any delays are not down to the connection!
If you are tired of slow load times on your website then why not switch over to us today? 
We'll be letting all our clients know about this really cool special offer later today, but I thought I'd give our blog readers the inside track first.
Blacknight in partnership with SpreadShirt is offering free upgrades to the premium SpreadShirt shops. This upgrade will save you €60!!
Spreadshirt is an online platform that allows you to easily design and sell tshirts and other merchandise from your website or blog. In fact you don't even need a website to use it!
You can easily upload your own designs and add them to high quality tshirts, sweaters and even underwear.
To avail of the special offer you need to sign up to SpreadShirt through our website if you haven't done so already.
Once you have a spreadshirt account setup through us simply follow the link on our signup page to upgrade your account and use the special code reserved for Blacknight clients "BLACKNIGHTMERCH"
Within about 24 hours your account should be upgraded to a premium one which gives you a range of new options including:
So what are you waiting for? Sign up for a Spreadshirt account today and start selling custom tshirts and other merchandise
NB The coupon code and upgrade will only work for spreadshirt accounts that were created from the Blacknight signup page. The coupon code is valid until the 3rd January 2006. Please ensure that the upgrade coupon has worked and that you have not been charged for the upgrade, as we will not be held responsible for any charges.
We have received a number of phone calls in the past 24 - 48 hours regarding a domain name scam.
A UK company, European Domain Solutions, has been ringing Irish businesses to scare them into registering domain names. They will try to charge you upwards of £150 per domain (over €200!) to register the domains, which is several times what we charge.
If you are contacted by any UK companies offering domain names or trying to persuade you to register domain names please be careful. This kind of scam happens every few months and costs companies money that they could have invested elsewhere.
The kind of line they will use is that a 3rd party has contacted them wanting to register a domain name that is closely linked to your business.
They will offer to "protect" you for a "nominal" fee.
A sample email that one client received is below (identifying details have been removed):
With reference to our telephone conversation regarding an unrelated party wishing to register :-
www.somename.com
www.somename.net
www.somename.eu
The prices are as follows:-
For a 5 year registration: £150 per name (£30 per annum)
For a 10 year registration: £250 per name (£25 per annum)
Included in the package you will have unlimited e-mail facilities if you so wish, we would interlink the names into your current web site or if at any point you wanted to put web pages behind the names we would give you all the web space with full technical support to host that site for the duration of the registration.
At the end of the registration period you will be invited to renew automatically. Registrations will prevent the third party using your company name on the internet or moving on to another registrar without consulting yourselves.
Please contact me as soon as possible on +44 (0)870 XXX XXXX
Kindest Regards
Here at Blacknight we are passionate about blogging - or at least I am
Anyhow I thought you'd like to know that we've expanded on our support resources and have added a number of handy tutorials for users of Wordpress.
Enjoy!