Archive for the ‘Domain Names’ Category
Sunday, August 29th, 2010
What is the WDRP?
The Whois Data Reminder Policy or WDRP is a consensus policy adopted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which requires domain name registrants to review the contact information associated with their domain names and make corrections when necessary. As a part of this, domain name registrars are required to formally remind their customers once a year to review and update their contact information. For detailed information about the adoption of the WDRP, see http://www.icann.org/registrars/wdrp.htm.
I just received a WDRP notice. Is this a legitimate request?
The purpose of the WDRP notice is to remind domain name registrants of their obligation to update contact information on file for their domain names. Although you should always be wary of phishing messages and other fraudulent emails, a legitimate WDRP notice email serves an important purpose. For suggestions to avoid phishing scams, visit http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt127.shtm
Why is ICANN contacting me regarding the WDRP? ICANN is not my registrar.
ICANN oversees the domain name system, but it does not send out WDRP notices. WDRP notices are sent by domain name registrars in order to comply with an ICANN policy. Although some registrars might send out messages from an “icann@” email account, these messages do not come from ICANN. ICANN requires domain name registrars to send WDRP notices to registrants in order to ensure that Whois records are maintained accurately.
What is a Whois record? What is my duty to keep the information in the record current?
Your registrar maintains a public database of contact information for all of the domain names it maintains. This database is known as a Whois database, and it is available to be searched by members of the public in order to allow rapid resolution of technical problems and to permit enforcement of consumer protection, trademark, and other laws. Your domain name registration agreement with your registrar requires that you keep this information accurate and current.
I received a WDRP notice, but my information is correct. Is any action required on my part to ensure my domain registration is not affected?
When sending WDRP notices, registrars are required to remind their customers that the provision of false Whois information can be grounds for cancellation of a domain name registration. If your information is correct, your domain name will not be cancelled and you do not need to take any action.
Does the WDRP notice indicate that someone complained about my website or domain name?
Annual WDRP notices are sent to all registrants of gTLD domain names (such as .com, .org, .info, etc.). If you received one of these notices, it does not mean that someone complained about your site or your domain name. Although your registrar might contact you if it receives a complaint about your domain name, this would not be in the form of a WDRP notice.
How do I update my contact information / Whois record?
ICANN does not maintain Whois data. In order to update your contact information in the Whois database, you will need to contact your registrar.
If you registered your domain at DS-Hosting Solutions then we give you full domain name magement tools to update your contact information. You can login to your client center and surf to “Manage Domains” in the left navigation menu. Find the domain you wish to update and click the 
icon. Now you can update your “Contact Information” by clicking the link for that domain’s left navigation menu item.
I’m having trouble updating my Whois data. Can I just send it to ICANN?
No. ICANN does not maintain Whois records. Please open a support ticket if you registered your domain through DS-Hosting Solutions. Otherwise you need to contact your current domain registrar.
I cancelled the registration of my domain name and am still receiving WDRP emails. Is this appropriate?
You should contact your registrar or open a support ticket if you registered your domain through DS-Hosting Solutions for more information.
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Thursday, July 8th, 2010
The Registry Operator for the award-winning, communications-focused .tel top level domain (TLD), announced that all .tel names now support the hCard microformat, OpenID and Open Authentication (OAuth). In addition, Telnic also announced its support for the DataPortability Project (
http://dataportability.org), signing up to its Portability Policy Initiative.
“With these enhancements, .tel owners can now benefit from being more discoverable and begin to utilize their .tel domain in conjunction with more services,” said Henri Asseily, CTO and Chief Strategist for Telnic Limited. “With the introduction of support for these standards, .tel becomes more useful to and more manageable for individuals to use as a single authoritative source of information online across multiple services.”
Telnic has also published its Data Portability Policy at
http://www.telnic.org/portabilitypolicy.html. Elias Bizannes, Chairman of the DataPortability Project said: “Telnic’s support for these open standards enables true interoperability – companies can integrate their own products against Telnic’s suite with minimal effort and maximum future-capability. By also adopting a Portability Policy, they are enabling clearer communication with their stakeholders as they evolve.”
hCard – is a microformat for publishing and reading of contact information of people, companies or organizations by third-party technologies. This format is now supported automatically in .tel names, with no action required for the owner.
OpenID – is an open, decentralized standard for authenticating users that can be used for access control, allowing users to log on to different services with the same digital identity where these services trust the authentication body. From today, a .tel owner will be able to use
http://yourname.tel and their .tel username and password as authentication when signing in to the many online services that support OpenID.
OAuth – allows a user to grant a third-party site access to their information stored with another service provider, without sharing their access permissions or the full extent of their data. This will enable services offered to the .tel community to manage their .tel names using a variety of third party tools to be delivered in a secure, simple and trustworthy way.
Tags: telhosting
Filed under Domain Names, Website Development | 1 Comment »
Saturday, December 26th, 2009
If you are going to transfer your website from one web hosting provider to another, then your old DNS (Domain Name Server) records are still cached for a given time by your ISP (and all other DNS servers around the globe). How long it takes for you until your domain resolves (also known as DNS propagation) to the new location can be figured out by following the steps outlined below:
- In Microsoft Windows go to your “Start Menu”.
- Choose “Run …”.
- Type within the text field “cmd”.
- Magically a black box appears, at the command prompt type the following:
- nslookup [enter]
- set debug [enter]
- www.yourdomain.tld [enter] <= Change this to the domain you are moving from webhost
The answer we are looking for can be found under the headline …. “ANSWERS” just below the headline “QUESTIONS”. 
We are specifically interested in the value TTL (Time To Live). These are the seconds it takes before your ISP (Internet Service Provider) will refresh the DNS records that belongs to your domain.
Below an illustrating picture:
Tags: DNS
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Sunday, September 27th, 2009
Managing your sub-domains has just become so much easier. You can now rename a folder, and all links to it throughout your domain will be updated automatically.
Note that the opposite won’t work: editing a “Go to” link to a folder does not change the folder name.
You can now change the default title of your .tel page to any text you like—so nestle.tel can now say Nestlé!
Use any language and special characters, and up to 255 bytes of text, individual for every folder. Just click Edit for the heading above the Profile menu on the Dashboard.
With the new username type in Contact items, you can add all your gaming handles, virtual characters and usernames to your .tel page. Your .tel is now your virtual identity!
Create a new contact item “username” with the name and add a comment for details.
Tags: telhosting
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Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
Losing a domain is an incredibly frustrating experience for domain owners. This article will help explain how this happens, and how you can keep it from happening to you.
There are three main ways that people lose domain names:
- An owner allows the domain registration to lapse.
- A domain is stolen after a hijacker gains access to the registry record.
- An owner does not keep up-to-date contact information in their record and their record is deleted after the registrar concludes that contact with the owner is not possible.
The good news is that there are steps you can take to keep this from happening to you. The most basic way to avoid losing your domain is to keep track of expiration dates and maintain your contact information. One smart way to do this is to consolidate your domains at one high-quality registrar. This allows you to manage a domain portfolio more easily and comprehensively. But remember, your domain can be deleted if your contact data is out of date. Registrars now have to verify ownership annually.
A second and related tip is to make sure that you are listed as the Administrative Contact. If it is a corporate domain name, then make sure the business owner or a senior executive is the Administrative Contact; this person is authorized to modify the website hosting, the records and he or she can change the domain’s ownership.
Next, it is important to use a paid email account for your Administrative Contact email address whenever possible. Free email addresses can be suspended or deleted. If this happens, you will not receive notices from your registrar for renewal, and someone else could register that email address and then use it to request a domain transfer.
You can also place a registrar lock on your domain. This can help prevent it from being transferred, modified or deleted by a third party. It is also important that you make sure your registrar gives you the ability to unlock your domain at any time without having to call or email them (at DS-Hosting Solutions you can lock/unlock your domain at any time). Otherwise, when you sell a domain name you will have to wait for someone at the registrar to process your request, and then the transfer will take more time and most importantly, it will take more time for you to receive your payment.
It is also important for you to be an educated email user. Never respond to emails that ask you to click on a link or respond without investigating the source and fully understanding the e-mail’s contents. Be especially careful with domain-related emails that look official but are from an unknown source. Contact your registrar to find out what is happening and if the email is from them. Domain hijackers have been known to send out mass transfer requests hoping that a small number of people will actually accept the transfer request. Do not let yourself fall prey to this type of scam.
Another step you can take to make sure you do not lose your domain is putting your registrar on your email list of "approved senders". This will ensure that you receive emails from your registrar, including the all important registry renewal notices.
Finally, on a related note, it is a good idea to renew your domain early and for long periods of time.
Protect your domains by following these guidelines:
- Keep track of expiration dates and keep your contact information up-to date. (Consider domain consolidation.)
- Make sure you are listed as the Administrative Contact so that only you can modify the domain record or change ownership.
- Try to avoid using free-email addresses.
- Make use of registrar locks over which you have control.
- Be an educated email user: investigate email senders and email contents.
- Place your registrar on your "approved sender" email list and have emails from them go straight to your inbox.
- Renew your domain early and for long periods of time.
Tags: tutorial
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Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Addon domain:
Addon domains allow you to have more than one independent website sharing the resources of your hosting account. Addon domains hosting is similar to virtualization. You can host multiple domains or multiple websites on a single account which are basically setup as sub domains on the main domain but the domains you add as a addon domain gets parked on top of the subdomain. You can see website of the sub domain when you type your addon domain in your browser but the URL never changes as it continues with your addon domain in the browser.
Parked domain:
You can have multiple domain names pointing to your site. This is a great way to increase your online visibility. Parked domain on main domain shows the website of the main domain. Similarly parked domain on the subdomain would show the website of subdomain.
Examples of parked domains are:
- ds-hostingsolutions.com/kb/differences-addon-and-parked-domains-explained/
- ds-hostingsolutions.biz/kb/differences-addon-and-parked-domains-explained/
Apache configuration needs to know what directory to call when someone opens a particular website in the browser and in case of addon domains, it will load the subdomain. Your addon domain is added as an alias for that subdomain.
From a user perspective, an addon domain functions just like any other domain. You can register and set up an addon domain under your existing web hosting account. So when your visitors type “http://www.yourdomain.com” in their browser, they will be transported to the new site. The difference between a parked domain and an addon domain from a web user’s perspective is that with a parked domain the URL in the address bar will change to the physical location of the page as the page loads.
For example, if you type http://www.abc.com, that domain won’t remain in the browser address bar, but will change to “http://www.domain.com/abc/index.html” as soon as the page is displayed.
DS-Hosting Solutions allows you to add or park as many domains on your web hosting account you need.
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Saturday, May 16th, 2009
Propagation is the process by which name servers are made aware of the changes that you make to your domain name with your registrar (the company you purchased your domain name with). This process can take between 24 and 72 hours.
Why does this process take so long?
DNS propagation takes a bit of time because the "synchronization" is happening amongst hundreds of thousands of servers. The process may seem to take too long but it is happening quite rapidly on a pretty large scale.
Please know that this is under the control of the registry, and DS-Hosting Solutions does not have any abilities to make this happen faster.
However, eNom has developed a revolutionary way to update DNS settings. This allows the user to make DNS changes that will apply within approximately 4 seconds.
Compare that to the "12 to 24 hours" needed for most domain registrars or the "several days" by some ISP’s.
And since DS-Hosting Solutions has partnered with one of the worlds biggest registrar, eNom, you will make advantage of these Real-time DNS updates if we register your domain name 
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Saturday, May 16th, 2009
This video shows how to populate your .tel with contact data using the .tel Control Panel.
Tags: telhosting, tutorial
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Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Take a moment to familiarize yourself with your new .tel domain name. Let’s remind you of some of the functionality available to use today:
It’s one simple contact address for life – All you need to do is to give your friends, family and colleagues your .tel address, and they will then be able to keep in touch with you how and when you want them to.
All of your contact information is in one place – The .tel enables you to store all of your contact information, including telephone numbers, email addresses, your favorite websites, social media pages, your blog sites, location-based sites, links to OpenID, OpenSocial or other identity verification solutions, and numerous other contact channels and technologies, all under one simple name. You can also store your information in an encrypted form, so no one else can see it unless you grant them access to it – that includes Telnic and your .tel service provider.
Instantly updated, you’re always in the right place – If you lose a mobile device and change the number, move home, gain a new contact solution like Skype or another Voice over IP (VOIP) service, change jobs, move overseas, travel a lot, start a new business or move premises, or even join a new social network, you can update your .tel and it will change instantly as it uses the DNS to publish to the internet almost instantly.
Tell people how you want to be contacted – If you have a number of ways in which you can be reached, you can prioritise the order of the contact information as it displays, so you can ask to be contacted first by email, or through your blog, or other ways. You can also change the type of information available depending on your location or the time of day. This is especially helpful if you’re a frequent traveller, for example.
Show people where you are – Additional functionality within the .tel allows you to tell people where in the world you are. This location can then be used, under your control, to help people find your physical location or to help services you subscribe to produce personalized offerings for you, giving you a better experience. You don’t need to use this function if you are uncomfortable with giving out this information.
Tell the world about yourself – Your .tel also allows you to use an unlimited number of keywords to enable you to say something about yourself. These keywords are open to everyone, so again, be careful how you describe yourself. You can tell people where you work, your hobbies, your qualifications, anything you don’t mind sharing publicly.
Your interactive calling card on any device – Once you have published the information, you can access it from any device with an internet connection through a browser. You don’t need to format it in any special way, and it will be accessible instantly. Friends and business contacts can simply type in the address you give them and it will quickly appear on the device as it does not need to locate a website to get your information.
This is a significant benefit of not storing the information as HTML on a website – The .tel is fast, low-cost and easy to access in any format. With .tel, you do not need to host, manage and maintain a website.
Search engine optimization built in – For those more concerned with being found online, the .tel enables you to be discovered more quickly through search engines. The structured information, keywords and links to a domain name all enable search engines to see the relevance and purpose of the .tel and therefore its usefulness to people searching for relevant information.
Easily change your published profile – You will be able to set up a profile like ‘work’, ‘home’, ‘travel’, ‘holiday’ and so forth (the profile titles will only be visible to you) that quickly change the public and private contact information available to people looking at your .tel, depending on which profile you make active.
Tags: telhosting
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Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Keyword functionality should only be used to help people find you if you haven’t given them your .tel domain name. It is not the right place for you to store your CV or information you might easily forget. Make sure that you only put information that is helpful for people to find you and that is not helpful for people to impersonate you.
For example:
- Never put your date of birth, home address, social security number, bank details or other financial indicators about yourself in your keywords.
- Never put information about other people you know within the keywords without seeking their permission.
- Avoid putting the places you frequently go to, such as clubs, restaurants, bars, gyms, etc., by name.
Always follow sensible rules for publishing personal information online – unless it is made private, anyone can find it.
Remember, if at any time you wish to change the information in your .tel, you can do so, and the information will be automatically updated and published online.
Tags: telhosting
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