OpenSRS Reseller Blog

The Impact of New IDNs

Adam Eisner — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:57:21 +0000

Since returning from the ICANN meeting in Seoul, I’ve received a lot of good questions about the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) announcement made there.

The announcement garnered a lot of attention from our resellers and international media alike. It essentially approves the introduction of IDNs “after the dot” for country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs). Currently, IDNs are only available “before the dot”, so the extension “after the dot” (such as .CN or .IN) has to remain in latin characters. Not so under the new ccTLD IDN structure.

So the question is, what has changed since the announcement? The answer is: nothing yet. ICANN’s announcement only opened the door for applications, and did not actually result in any new extensions being introduced to the domain name system just yet. Individual country representatives and ccTLD operators still have to apply for their IDN extensions, and systems will need to be adjusted (both by registrars and registries) to make the names available. As a registrar, we will start evaluating them as the ccTLDs we support start introducing them, but there are few time-lines available just yet. As we get more information, we’ll definitely be providing details.

In the meantime, ICANN has more information on the IDN fast track process for those looking to learn more.

cPanel Conference Wrap-up and Upcoming Events

Mou Mukherjee — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:53:42 +0000

Image courtesy of The WHIR

Last month we attended the cPanel Conference and we are happy to announce our prize winner. Congrats to Lenny from Codero for winning our iPod shuffle. This year’s conference was the biggest cPanel conference yet with over 180 attendee registrations and with folks traveling in from all over the world. It was a fun and educational environment, and a must-attend event for cPanel users! Thanks to the organizers for a great conference and also to everyone that stopped by our booth to say hello.

With another successful WHIR networking event taking place last week in Seattle, that wraps up our OpenSRS events schedule for the year. However, we are already busy planning for next year. I wanted to tell you about about a couple of exciting conferences that are coming up in the new year.

Parallels Summit 2010 – February 22-24

I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with the Parallels Summit 2010 new venue – the iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach Resort. The Parallels Summit gives you a chance to meet industry peers and get inspired to build better Cloud Services based businesses. The Parallels Summit has become the premier conference for industry leaders to discuss how to drive innovation, create differentiated service offerings, and build businesses that profit from the Cloud.

The conference is free for Parallels’ partners, customers, invited guests, and other industry professionals. If you register before November 13, 2009 you’ll be entered to win your choice of an iPod Touch or Microsoft Zune HD.

WebhostingDay 2010 – March 17-19

WebhostingDay is the largest web hosting event in Europe and possibly the world. Last year they had 2,000 attendees. It takes place in Phantasialand, an amusement park near Cologne, Germany. It offers a great mix of concentrated industry knowledge, networking events, and fun! Check out some of our WebhostingDay 2009 coverage. We will have free conference passes, and we’ll let you know how to register with them in the coming months.

We are really hoping that some of you are planning to attend these conferences not only because they are some of the best in our industry, but also because there is nothing better than connecting with our resellers, partners and industry peers face-to-face. As we get closer to these events, we will keep you posted. Follow us on twitter for event updates.

Meet OpenSRS: Change Management (Part 1) [Video]

Heather Leson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:06:03 +0000

We’re accountable to you to provide stable, reliable services. To meet that goal our Technical teams have made significant improvements to our Change Management processes.

In our last video, A.J. Mirani, Manager of Technical Operations, provided us with a brief overview of the Technical Operations team. He joins again with two videos explaining the OpenSRS/Tucows Change Management processes.

In this first part, A.J. talks about how we analyze changes and manage risk using our version of ITIL/ITSM: (5 minute video)

Next week, we’ll post part 2 of our conversation on Change Management.

Editor’s note: In this Meet OpenSRS series we will talk to people from our Technical Support, NOC (Network Operations Center), Ops (Technical Operations), Security and Development teams. We know you count on us to give you high levels of service, so that you can manage your businesses. Our goal is to give you an inside view into how we support and maintain your OpenSRS services.

ICANN 36 Is A Wrap

Adam Eisner — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:31:08 +0000

I’m back from Seoul, which played host last week to ICANN’s 36th International Meeting. As far as ICANN meetings go, this one was extremely busy, well-attended and led to several significant decisions on a policy level.

The decision which garnered the most international attention was ICANN’s approval of a “fast track” process for certain Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). This will allow certain ccTLDs to introduce internationalized versions of their extension in native language scripts. Historically, IDNs have only been available “before the dot”, while the actual extension had to remain in Latin characters. IDN ccTLDs, however, will allow the extension “after the dot” to be entered in native language scripts as well. With the approval of the fast track process, ICANN will now begin accepting IDN ccTLD applications. Stay tuned for more developments on this new process in the coming months.

For those interested in the approval of new Top Level Domain names, the Seoul conference had both positive and negative developments. On the plus side, coming away from the conference, it is very clear everyone is committed to new TLDs. However, it is also now clear that the original time-line, which would have seen the first applications submitted in the first quarter of 2010, is now obsolete. Instead, there are no longer any clear time-lines for the approval of new extensions. On a positive note, ICANN did approve a motion to explore allowing those interested in operating a new TLD to submit an “expression of interest”. These submissions would be accompanied by a deposit, and would theoretically allow ICANN to gauge how many serious bids currently exist and help them garner additional support.

The next ICANN conference takes place February 2010 in Nairobi, Kenya. By that time, we should have some additional clarity on just how long the new TLD process is going to take. But will we see dates and time-lines before then? If we do, you can be sure we’ll discuss them in this space.

The Registries: .CA

Heather Leson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:22:00 +0000

With a renewal rate of 74% and an annual growth rate of 20%, .CA serves value for your Canadian domains customers. The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) operates the .CA domain.

Disponible en Français au-dessous

Started in 1988, Growing Strong

The first .CA domain name was upei.ca, registered in 1988 by the University of Prince Edward Island. Back then, .CA was run by a group of volunteers at the University of British Columbia. In 2000, control of .CA was transferred to CIRA, a non-profit corporation that manages the .CA domain space on behalf of all Canadians.

.CA Today

With over 1.2 million .CA domains in existence today, .CA easily ranks in the top 20 of ccTLDs worldwide. According to CIRA, more than 400,000 times every minute someone initiates an action online that involves a .ca domain name. CIRA has a new campaign to help Resellers leverage this activity. It’s called “Get my Own .CA” and features great Canadian small businesses and organizations such as Midnight Poutine and Blade Tape (hockey stick tape). CIRA has targeted the small business market with ads appearing in Marketing Magazine, The Globe and Mail, CBC.ca and Yahoo Canada.

Why .CA? CIRA’s Annual Report has more statistics to help your customers when they consider .CA:

70% wanted to show their site was Canadian
60% of Canadians prefer .CA for online shopping
35% use their .CA for personal use
64% use their .CA companies/organizations

Adam Eisner, Director, Domain Services for OpenSRS on .CA and the Canadian Market:

Quick Facts:

The .CA registry is CIRA, a not-for-profit corporation
.CA domain names are reserved for Canadian people and organizations that meet CIRA Canadian Presence Requirements
Started by UBC researchers in 1987 and became available for the general public in December 2000
.CA, a ccTLD, has over 1. 2 million domains registered
Registering a .CA means you can apply to become a voting member of the organization

Available Resources:

Editor’s note: OpenSRS offers 25 different top-level domains (TLDs) for our resellers. This is the 15th post in a series intended to share information about the wide range of TLDs and to introduce you to some of the available resources that the various Registries provide.

Avec des renouvelements de 74% et une croissance annuelle de 20%, point-ca offre vos clients une aubaine. L’Autorité canadienne pour les enregistrements internet (ACEI) est le registre des noms de domaine .CA. En opération depuis une vingtaine d’années, le ccTLD .CA gère au-delà de 1,2 millions de noms de domaine:

Au moins 400,000 opérations chaque minute passent au cours de domaines point-ca. L’ACEI a récemment lancé « Get My Own .CA » , un projet démontrant des entreprises et organisations canadiennes, entre autres Midnight Poutine et Blade Tape. l’ACEI cible les petites entreprises avec ses annonces dans Marketing Magazine, Globeandmail.com, cbc.ca et Yahoo.ca.

Pourquoi point-ca? Le rapport annuel de l’ACEI pour 2009 offre quelques renseignements pour vos clients:

70% désire montrer aux visiteurs qu’il s’agit d’un site Web canadien

60% de canadiens préfèrent les domaines point-ca pour la commerce électronique

35% utilise point-ca pour tâches personelles

64% utilise point-ca pour compagnies ou organisations

Adam Eisner, Directeur de Domaines, au sujet de point-ca et le marché canadien:

Données:

Le registre point-ca est l’ACEI, un société du secteur privé à but non lucratif
Créé in 1987 par des bénévoles de l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique et ouvert au publique en Décembre 2000
Point-ca, un ccTLD, gè au-delá de 1,2 million domaines
Comme titulaire, vous pouvez devenir membre de l’ACEI et aider à façonner l’avenir du Canada sur l’Internet
En Octobre 2009, l’ACEI a lancé un banc d’essai pour le DNSSEC, technologie importante pour avertier l’usurpation de sites web

Resources Disponibles:

Note de l’Éditeur: OpenSRS offre 25 domaines de tête (TLDs) à nos clients. Vous lizes l’article quinze dans une série visée a enseigner au sujet de les nombreux domaines de tête et partager les resources qu’offrent divers registres.

Special thanks to Ben Zanin, Senior NOC Analyst, OpenSRS for providing his translation assistance.

Celebrate Halloween with OpenSRS

Le Quan Truong — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:54:12 +0000

Here at OpenSRS we take Halloween very seriously. Each year, Tucows HQ in Toronto becomes a place filled with wacky costumes wandering the halls. It’s a sight that’s sure to put a scare in each of us!

“Best Decorated Service Guy” Competition

This year we’re holding a “Best Decorated Service Guy” competition as part of the fun. We’d love for you to take part–if you have one of our Service Guy action figures, you too can join in the scary fun! This Friday, October 30th, 2009, dress him up, and then take a picture and send it to halloween@opensrs.com or post it on Twitter or Flickr. Be sure to tag it #serviceguy so we can find it. We’ll post all entries right here on our blog!

Fear not if you don’t have a Service Guy. We would still love to see what you are doing at your company to celebrate Halloween–send those pictures our way too!

There’s prizes!

A special prize will go to the person or company with “Best Decorated Service Guy” as well as the company or group with the most spirited photo.

In the meantime, I’m off to track down some eye of newt and toe of frog for my witches brew.

ICANN 36 Opens With A Flurry of Activity

Adam Eisner — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:13:21 +0000

Although ICANN’s 36th International Meeting here in Seoul has been underway for less than two days, it has already been quite eventful.

At Monday morning’s session on new gTLDs, a number of people voiced their frustration at a lack of definitive timeline around their launch (remember that applications were originally scheduled to be accepted in the early part of 2010, but it appears at this point that timeline is unlikely to be met). In the afternoon, representatives from Afilias, a registry services provider, and Demand Media, parent company of Enom, had a unique and spirited debate on the topic of Registry-Registrar separation. The session, held as a debate, addressed whether registrars involved in new TLD bids should be allowed to operate a registrar which sold the extension as well. An informal poll where participants were asked to shout their approval for one side over the other reflected the polarizing nature of the issue, as the room seemed split.

The final session I attended Monday was an open meeting of the Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery Working Group (PEDNR-WG), which is examining topics related to the abilities of registrants to recover domain names post expiration. This group is still in its early stages, with further updates expected in the coming months.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the workshop on Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), another highly-anticipated discussion topic at the meeting. During that session, it was announced that the IDN application process was expected to begin November 16 (subject to ICANN Board approval). This will allow ccTLD operators to offer their extensions in native scripts should they choose to do so.

All three sessions I attended were standing-room only, as was the IDN session. It is clear that this conference is touching upon a lot of hot-button issues that are going to have a significant impact on the future of the Internet.

Today (Tuesday) is Constituency Day, where various supporting organizations of ICANN get together to discuss relevant issues for a full day. Tucows’ CEO Elliot Noss and I will sit in the meeting of the Registrar Constituency alongside many other ICANN-accredited registrars, where we will discuss a wide range of topics affecting registrars industry-wide.

Editor’s note: For those not in Seoul, ICANN offers remote participation via its website that allows you to attend the meetings virtually, complete with a video and audio stream plus a chat window.

Thanks to ICANN for the photos on their Flickr page and for releasing them under a Creative Commons License.

ICANN 36 Preview: New CEO, New TLDs and More

Adam Eisner — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:11:55 +0000

ICANN’s 36th International Meeting, to be held next week in Seoul, Korea, promises to be an eventful one for a number of reasons.

The meeting will be the first under Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s new CEO. Beckstrom was confirmed as the CEO during the Sydney, Australia, meeting in June 2009, and has had a very busy few months since. Probably the most important development during his short tenure has been the Affirmation of Commitments announced in late September.

The Affirmation of Commitments is largely considered a very positive step in affirming ICANN as a global organization while solidifying its role in governing the Internet. For more insight into the impact of the Affirmation of Commitments, I highly recommend reading Tucows’ CEO Elliot Noss’ blog post on the topic.

gTLDs a “hot” topic

There will also be much discussion on the progress of new gTLDs at the conference. A few weeks ago, ICANN published a third version of the new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG), which outlines requirements and procedures for those interested in applying for a new domain extension (ICANN plans to accept proposals for a round of new extensions in 2010). Anticipated time lines for the introduction of new extensions and proposed measures to protect trademarks, two issues related to new gTLDs which have not yet been settled, will also be “hot” topics.

IDNs on the agenda

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will also be widely discussed. ICANN recently submitted a final proposal to “fast track” certain ccTLD extensions, and this proposal will be considered at the meeting by the ICANN board. If approved, the proposal will clear the way to introduce IDNs “after the dot” – that is, making domain extensions (and not just the name itself) available and operational in different language scripts.

I’ll provide some notes on the meeting once I’m on the ground in Seoul, as well as a wrap-up. Keep an eye on this space for updates.

New Customization Features in OpenSRS Storefront

James Koole — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:24:31 +0000

Last week we rolled an update to OpenSRS Storefront that allows Resellers to edit the text on the home page and also to create a page for displaying and marketing any sales or promotions that Resellers may be running. Documentation has been updated to reflect the changes, but I thought I’d put together a quick tutorial showing how to do it. I’m trying something a bit different this time so instead of a video screencast, I’ve provided step by step instructions with screenshots. Let me know which one you think works better for you in the comments, if you wish.

And on a related note, we’re continuing to work on OpenSRS Storefront and we’d love to hear your opinions on how we can make it better. Either drop us a comment right here in the blog, or drop by the forum and join in the discussion there.

Click through to view the tutorials, or download a PDF version for easy printing.

How to edit the text on your OpenSRS Storefront homepage

This is the standard home page that OpenSRS Storefront provides. There are a few different themes, but all the elements are the same. Until now, the text in the red box was static, and couldn’t be edited by Resellers.

To edit the home page, log into either the Reseller Web Interface (RWI), and then click on “Configure your Storefront” or you can head straight to the Storefront Manager if you wish.

Once in the Storefront Manager, click on “Basic Store Settings” which brings up the following page.

Scroll down to the bottom of that page.

Now click “Edit Homepage” to bring up the home page editor.

You’ll see a graphical representation of the editable elements of the home page. We’ll start by editing the Header text. Click the “Edit” button in the Header area.

That brings up this editor window. You can choose the default text, or…

You can edit the text and then click “Save” at the bottom of the page to make the changes live on your Storefront.

You can see here that the text in the header has been replaced with my new text.

Going back to the Edit homepage screen now, I’m going to edit the sub header area next by clicking the “Edit” button on the Sub Header section.

That brings up a similar editing window where I can edit the text that appears just below the header text.

I’ve edited my text and clicked “Save” and it’s now live on my Storefront.

Here’s my new home page with edited header and sub header text.

As mentioned, you’ll also find a new feature that gives Resellers the ability to create a promotions page where you can add arbitrary text and other content that you can use to promote specific domains or other services that you see through your Storefront.

Here’s how you accomplish that:

How to create and link to a promotions page on your OpenSRS Storefront

Starting at the Storefront Manager homepage, click “Basic Store Settings”.

Scroll down to the bottom of that page.

Then click on “Edit Promotions Page” where you can enable and add content to your new promotions page.

Add your desired text and format it either using the WYSIWYG editor, or switch to Source view and edit HTML directly. You’ll note that the URL for the page is provided along with a handy link so you can see the results as they appear on your Storefront.

Here’s my new promotions page with some promotional copy that I’ve added. I’ve also included a date so my customers will know this is current content.

Next, I’ll want to link to my promotions page so customers can find the content. I’m going to add that to the sub header area of my home page. I’ve switched over to edit that (the other tutorial shows you how to get to this page if you’re having trouble.
You can include text with hyperlinks – I’ve made “see the details” a hyperlink to the promotions page using the URL that was provided when I created and enabled the page in the previous step.

A check of my Storefront homepage shows my new copy with the link to the promotions page.

Bulk Migrating Mail Into OpenSRS Email Service

James Koole — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:17:29 +0000

Bringing more tools down to the Reseller level from the support or Professional Services level is something we’ve been focusing on for OpenSRS Email Service. You might remember that we recently made it easier to have deleted email and mailboxes restored without requiring customer support intervention.

Bulk Migrate End-user Mail from Other Email Services

Just last week we rolled out the ability to migrate user mail into OpenSRS Email Service mailboxes in bulk. This means Resellers are now able to create a bunch of new accounts on the service, and then move existing mail data from outside servers into those accounts in bulk. This simplifies and streamlines the process of moving users from other email services and servers onto OpenSRS Email and diminishes the need for support or Professional Services involvement on smaller mail migrations.

There’s more detail on page 43 in the Mail Administration Center (MAC) User’s Guide for those looking to start using this tool. If you want to get a sense for how the tool works, here’s a tutorial screencast that shows at a higher level just how it’s done.

What Do You Think?

We’d love to hear what you think of the tools that we’ve already brought down to the Reseller level, be it the ability to restore deleted mail or this new tool to migrate end-user mail over to OpenSRS Email Service mailboxes. I’ve started a forum thread if you want to comment and add your opinions or thoughts. As always, comments right here at the blog are always welcome.