easyDNS Blog

Let the barrage of updates begin.

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:27:14 -0400

We will be cutting over to the new front end website on Monday, at 11:00am EST.

Interested parties can have a look at it now:

http://web.easydns.com

although there are still a few wrinkles to iron out.

As most of you know, the new member user interface has been live for awhile and is accessible now. Please review How to Port a Domain to the new easyDNS User Interface ahead of moving any domains over.

We are theologically opposed to "flash cuts". Meaning there will probably never be a day when we just "move everybody over" to the new system. Those events are company killers. We're an incremental cutover kind of shop, and that's what we'll be doing here.

Moving forward, there will increasing incentives to use the new system, and diminishing returns to staying on the old one. At some point we will handle certain support requests by asking you to move your domain to the new system where whatever bug it is you've found on the old system has been fixed or whatever it is that you are asking us to do can be done in the UI (example: exempting a domain from greylisting).

As we roll out new features (something we will finally start doing again), they'll all roll out to the new system, not the old (because if you so much as tweak anything on the old system, it explodes).

We'll be making a series of announcements here as we lead up to, and then in the aftermath of, the Cutover.

Here's a few we can take care of right here:

The blog will be moving to a new CMS, which is more in keeping with the look of the new front end. We'll try to do this in a way where the RSS feeds you may have in your feedreaders and aggregators will still work.
Secondary DNS is no longer a product, it's a capability. This means we will no longer be offering secondary DNS on it's own. Sign up for DNS Hosting or DNS Pro and run it in secondary DNS mode. All existing secondary DNS users and subscriptions blocks are grandfathered in forever. No forced upgrades (unless your domain goes over usage in queries).
The price of registration only, or transfer only on most TLDs has been dropped to $19. We will be adding some nice features to the parked domains soon, but we're still going to drop the price. (If there's a domain you want to register ahead of monday you can log into the new platform now using your existing userid/password and add the domain there directly and get the reduced price now).

We'll break out other announcements into seperate posts. Feel free to comment here.

Beta interface maintenance Wednesday May 5th at 10:00pm EST

nospam@example.com (easyDNS Support) — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:55:14 -0400

Greetings,

The EasyDNS systems administration team will be performing a brief maintenance on the "beta" DNS management interface this evening. Beginning tonight at 10:00pm EST, the work will cause intermittent outages between 10:00pm EST possibly extending to 2:00am EST on the morning of Thursday May 6th.

During this window the beta site will appear for the most part live, with the "outages" lasting in 5 to 20 minute bursts.

Thank you for your understanding as we work to improve your service experience.

Update: Added EST time reference point.

.CO Domain International Sunrise now Available

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:42:19 -0400

We are now accepting orders for .CO Domain International Sunrise claims. (We previously mentioned the rollout of the .CO Top Level Domain here)

This is for holders of registered trademarks, where the registration date is prior to July 31, 2008.

The price for Sunrise claims is $300 USD, which covers the first year registration for successful claims.
If your claim is not successful, we will refund $50 back to you.
(Our cost on this breaks out to $205 non-refundable for the sunrise claim, and $25 for the first year registration).

The International Sunrise phase of the .CO rollout continues through until June 10, 2010. The order of applications does not matter. If there are more than one valid trademark orders for the same domain, that domain will go into an auction process.

As our customers may be aware, we are breaking with our usual policy of ignoring new top-level-domains (as we wrote here and here) and recommending you pursue a .CO domain under the following circumstances:

If you are running a production, webfront, ecommerce, online business that is identfied primarily by your .com web address, then you should attempt to grab the .CO version of your domain. While normally we feel it is safe to ignore most top-level-domains, and that you can safely not defend your names within them, we feel that .CO is an exception because of it's obvious typo and visual correlation to ".COM".

The .CO Registry has released this Open Letter to Brand Owners which describes their internal processes and structure but doesn't really change the fact that if you're currently branded under .COM and you take your presence seriously, you're probably going to bite the bullet.

How to Enter Your Sunrise Claim

Continue reading ".CO Domain International Sunrise now Available"

support for Saturday April 24th, 2010

nospam@example.com (easyDNS Support) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:54:39 -0400

Due to unforseen staffing concerns
support will not be available on Saturday April 24th, 2010.

we do sincerely apologise for the inconvenience.

thank you
easyDNS

How to link multiple domains to a website

nospam@example.com (DomainHELP) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:46:40 -0400

Nick from the U.K asks:
My company recently purchased a couple domains and we want those to link to our current website. Eg. example.com will transfer to example.co.uk instantly. How can I do this?
Many Thanks,
Nick
This is similar to an earlier post How do I point ?www.domain.com? at ?domain.com? or vice-versa?, but since we’re going across multiple [...]

mailout.easydns.com IP Change

nospam@example.com (easyDNS Support) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:59:37 -0400

In an effort to continue providing you with a rock solid service we've changed the IP (and moved the service) of mailout.easydns.com
The new IP is: 64.68.200.141

The old system will be kept online for a couple of days longer and we will allow it to dequeue all its mail before shutting it down.

As always if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact support.

Easter Holiday Hours

nospam@example.com (easyDNS Support) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:50:06 -0400

Telephone and email support on Friday April 2nd 2010 will be available from 10:00AM until 6:PM.

thank you
easyDNS

(April 1st post) DNSMadeEasy and easyDNS to merge

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:55:27 -0400

/Washington, Toronto - 04/01/2010/ Following an emerging trend of consolidation within the DNS hosting space, DNSMadeEasy of Washington, DC and easyDNS of Toronto, have agreed to merge.

If approved by regulators in both countries the combination, "will create a new 800 pound gorilla in the room" according to industry commentators.

It is yet to be decided if the merged entity will be called DNSMadeEasyDNS.com or easyDNSMadeEasy.com.

Further details available at:

http://www.dnsmadeeasydns.com
http://www.easydnsmadeeasy.com

Junior Support Rep Position

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:52:46 -0400

easyDNS is hiring a full-time junior support representative.

Some experience desired but the most important thing we're looking for is a good head, ability to work well with others, effective communication, problem solving skills, plus the ability to learn and adapt quickly.

We prefer candidates that are english/french bilingual, but it's not required. Having customers in over 100 countries worldwide, fluency in any other languages doesn't hurt.

It would be very helpful to have a technical background, be comfortable with unix shells and the standard LAMPware suite. Having an in depth knowledge of domains and DNS is a must.

Bonus points for: knowledge or experience working with VOIP, SIP, Jabber, OpenID, SVN, Bonjour and basically being a general purpose geek.

We offer a competitive salary commensurate with experience, full benefits with RRSP plan, not to mention a positive work environment.

Our turnover is very low and many of the people here have been on board for nearly a decade or more.

If you are interested or know somebody who may be, feel free to direct them here and have them send a cover letter and resume to jobs [at] easydns.com or fax same to 1-866-273-2892

Emails about: Intellectual property rights Regarding "yourname"

nospam@example.com (DomainHELP) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:18:28 -0400

It is not uncommon to get unsolicited email from some party representing themselves as an overseas trademark or domain registry that has received a request from some local party that they feel may infringe upon your trademark.

You can consider these just a form of marketing email (spam) or a elaborate way to entice you into spending needless funds on "defending your trademark" by registering variations of domain names you already own under various foreign Top-Level-Domains.

When RBLs go bad: blackholes.uceb.org is now wildcarded

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:37:04 -0400

blackholes.uceb.org was an antispam RBL that shut down in 2008, but as with all RBLs, they tend to find their way into mail server configs and then ossify there.

It looks like whoever ran uceb.org decided that two years was enough and to let the domain lapse. Yesterday, the domain's registrar put the domain in a "pending delete or resale" status:

Domain ID:D84712302-LROR
Domain Name:UCEB.ORG
Created On:21-Mar-2002 11:13:47 UTC
Last Updated On:27-Mar-2010 08:19:20 UTC
Expiration Date:21-Mar-2011 11:13:47 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Network Solutions LLC (R63-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:AUTORENEWPERIOD
Registrant ID:DOMAIN-RESALE
Registrant Name:Pending Renewal or Deletion

and then, as is pretty standard operating procedure in cases like this: they wildcarded the domain's DNS.

That means for anbody who was still referencing blackholes.uceb.org in their mailer config, it wasn't doing much damage (or good) since July, 2008...until yesterday. Then they probably started rejecting ALL email because all addresses within *.blackholes.uceb.org now return true....

.CO Domain Registrations are Coming. Will You Participate?

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:44:00 -0500

A bunch of years ago I had an idea for an espionage/action/thriller story where a bunch of mercenaries planned a coup d'etat against the regimes of either Columbia or Cameroon for the sole reason of gaining control over the country's top-level domain registry and making billions off of typo-squatting .COM.

Truth did kind of mimic fiction (minus the coup d'etat part) when Kevin Ham cut a deal with Cameroon to wildcard .CM root. Well now Columbia has decided to overhaul it's .CO root level domain and open it up to second level registations for non-locals.

.CO is being marketed ostensibly as 'Associated globally with the words "COmpany," "COrporation" and "COmmerce"', but let's face it, the activity in this TLD is going to be driven primarily by the fact that it's a typosquatter's wet dream for .COM and a goddamn headache for everybody else with a net presence built mainly under .COM.

As we've observed before (here and then here), most registrars like to whip their customer base into a frenzy to "grab your name" under every TLD that tries to tart itself up as some pseudo-generic and trots itself out as the latest "must-have" domain. Most of them aren't "must-haves" and a lot of them are quite frankly, a waste of time and money.

So it is with a heavy heart I have to come out and say this. If you're operating a serious net presence on .COM, you probably should go out and get the .CO version of your name, as much of a royal pain in the ass as that is/will be. Not to mention expensive. The base cost on a non-Columbian Sunrise claim will be somewhere north of $250 (non-refundable) and for landrush there will be a small non-refundable "application fee" but the first year registration will be over $200. Then after landrush, the cost will settle down to a more digestible level, only about 3 times the wholesale base cost of an actual .COM.

Nice work if you can get it.

We don't want to make a bad situation worse, but we won't work for free either, so we'll try to keep our markup reasonable.

What I am interested in is what our members think of this. If you have a few moments, please take the following survey on whether you will participate in .CO. For each response we'll donate $1 to the charity of your choice.

Feel free to comment as well.

Continue reading ".CO Domain Registrations are Coming. Will You Participate?"

How to Port a Domain to the new easyDNS User Interface

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0500

For members who want an advance preview into the new system, what follows are step-by-step instructions on how to move a domain from the current easyDNS interface to the new management platform.

The new platform has been live since mid-2009, many of the staff here have been running their personal domains off of here and we've had numerous beta users on board as well. Additionally, I've been running one of my personal email accounts through the new easyMAIL platform since last summer, and I felt confident enough to switch my mom's email to it a few weeks ago.

There are few things we are still smoothing out and filling in like some of the help docs and some of the new features.

But here it is, the shape of things to come for easyDNS.

Until you get the hang of the new platform, we strongly suggest that you start with a non-critical domain. Something that won't ruin your life if the unexpected happens.

There is also this introductory document which outlines the new features and what changes on the new platform. It is strongly recommended that you review that document first.

So without further adieu, here's how to move a domain to the new system....
Continue reading "How to Port a Domain to the new easyDNS User Interface"

New website launch postponed until April 12

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:23:19 -0500

We are pushing back the launch of the new website and user interface until April 12, for a few reasons - not the least of which is that we will be shorthanded through the month of March on a few fronts. (March break, time off with the kids, Confoo, etc).

What we will do next week is post instructions on how to start trying out the new platform in advance and begin talking about what's new under the new system.

Useless URLs, Episode 2: Internet Marketing Experts in Toronto

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:51:28 -0500

This morning I had just dropped my daughter off at school when an ad came on CBC radio as I was headed to my workout, the gist of it was:

More and more consumers are headed online as the first step in their next purchase. Is your business positioned to cash in on this trend?

It sounded a little 1998-ish to me, but what really got me was the URL. These ads were from some online internet marketing company here in Toronto and the URL was......

Continue reading "Useless URLs, Episode 2: Internet Marketing Experts in Toronto"