Happy Family Day from the OpenSRS team!

We’ll be closed this Monday for Ontario’s Family Day holiday. We’re looking forward to spending some quality time with our loved ones.

Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.

Please note that during this closure, there will be:

• No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: (.at, .fr, .nl, .ch, .li, .it, .dk, .com.mx)
• No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).

Here are the hours by department:

Effective Tuesday, February 9th, 2010, we’re implementing a new “soft-suspension” process for all users of OpenSRS Email Service. This new process is intended to mitigate the potential effects of spam sent by users of OpenSRS Email Service and to ensure good deliverability and reliable service for all users.

Full information about the change has been sent to all OpenSRS Email Service Resellers. Full details are available in the Resource Center – direct link.

Happy Holidays from the OpenSRS team. Most of our offices will be closed from the afternoon of December 24, 2009 through the morning of January 3, 2010. Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.

photo by Frank Lemire, Technical Support Team Lead

Here are the hours by department:

Please note that during this closure, there will be:

• No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: (.at, .fr, .nl, .ch, .li, .it, .dk, .com.mx)
• No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).

We are looking forward to working with you in the new decade. Happy Holidays to you, your business colleagues and your families.

We have some great news to help you wrap up 2009 and kick off 2010 with a bang: Starting December 1st, and continuing through the end of March, 2010, .ME domains are just $4.99 at OpenSRS! That’s 75% off the regular price.

Make sure you sign up

As with most OpenSRS promotions, you’ll need to signup to take advantage of the savings and you’ll receive the discount in the form of a rebate, deposited into your OpenSRS Reseller account in the following month. The promotional price applies to new one-year registrations or the first year of new, multi-year registrations only. Renewals, transfers and any domains sold through OpenSRS Storefront are not eligible.

Click here to sign up for the .ME promo and while you’re there, make sure you sign up for our other promotions underway right now including .TV, .INFO and .IN domain names.

Canadian Thanksgiving is Monday, October 12th, 2009. Our corporate offices will be closed for annual harvest activities like jumping into piles of leaves and eating pie. Our Technical Support team will remain available. If you are celebrating, enjoy your feast. We’ll be back in full force on Tuesday, October 13, 2009.

photo by Imran M., Tucows Lead Engineer

Here are the hours by department:

We just wrapped up development on a complete rewrite our Managed DNS service and it will be going live on October 8th, 2009.

Our developer team undertook the task of rewriting the DNS ordering and management process inside the Reseller Web Interface (RWI) and away from the RWI2. While they were at it, they also added DNS to the OpenSRS XML API as opposed to the Tucows Provisioning Protocol API (TPP) where it current lives. The result of that rewrite was released to the Horizon Test Environment on October 1st, 2009 and includes a number of other changes that we think you’re going to like.

The current Managed DNS Service is Still Fully Available

One thing to note right away is that the current Managed DNS system isn’t going anywhere for now. If you are using Managed DNS, you’ll have lots of time to more over to the new DNS service and we’ll keep you well informed about any important dates and exactly how to move over to the new service. Right now, we’re looking at about a 6 month time frame where we’ll be running both systems in parallel.

What’s new, and what’s improved

The new DNS system addresses a couple of issues surrounding the current Managed DNS service that we’ve long sought to eliminate.

First off, DNS is moving from the RWI2 and the TPP API and into the RWI and OpenSRS API. That accomplishes a couple of other things at the same time:

1. It transitions DNS into the OpenSRS API and out of the TPP API.
2. It eliminates the whole ordering process in the RWI2 that tended to confuse and confound some Resellers.

The net result is that DNS services are much easier to order, configure and manage. Provisioning DNS along with a new domain order is as easy as adding a command to the API call to add DNS to the domain, configured with a default template. Adding DNS to a new domain order via the RWI is as simple as ticking a check box during the domain order process which adds DNS to the domain, again, fully configured with a template or your choice.

Additionally, there is now support for IPv6 AAAA records in the new Managed DNS Service.

For the end-user facing Manage Web Interface (MWI) there are some changes as well. We’ve added the ability for end-users to manage their own zone records and set domain forwarding (including domain masking, if desired).

Still Free!

As with the current Managed DNS Service, DNS is included free with your OpenSRS Reseller account.

Add .IN, .BZ and .WS to the list of ccTLDs you can sell through OpenSRS beginning October 8th, 2009. The addition of these new extensions brings the total number of ccTLDs that OpenSRS offers to 22.

Here’s what’s being added:

• .IN (India) – India’s population of over 1.2 billion people represents a huge and increasingly connected market for domains and Internet services. That said, there are no residency requirements for .IN domains and anyone can register one. In addition to second level domains (e.g. example.in), you can also register the following third level domains: co.in, net.in, org.in, firm.in, gen.in, and ind.in. To start things off with a bang, we’re rolling out a .IN promotion at the same time. From launch through to the end of October, .IN domains are just $2.99! Find out more and sign up.
• .WS (Western Samoa/WebSite) – While Western Samoa might not seem like the largest of markets for domain names, the fact that the ccTLD .WS can represent the word WebSite has made .ws domains a fairly popular alternative to other extensions for personal and small business websites. There are no residency requirements for .WS domains.
• .BZ (Belize) – .BZ domains are promoted as an alternative domain extension for businesses. There are no residency requirements for .BZ domains.

The OpenSRS domains wholesale pricing chart has been updated with the costs for the new extensions.

And on a related note:

• .NL (Netherlands) – Effective October 2, 2009, the residency requirements for .NL domain registrations have been effectively removed as the Registry is now providing a local presence for those registrants who don’t have one. Simply submit any non-resident .NL domain registrations as normal, with the correct contact information and we’ll be sure to add the local presence upon submission to the registry.

ccTLDs Growing Strong

The latest VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief was released in September and it highlighted something that we’ve been saying for a while now – Country-Code Top-level domains (ccTLDs) are hot, and getting hotter.

While growth in Generic Top-level domains (gTLDs) has slowed somewhat of late, ccTLDs continue to show impressive growth of 14% year-over-year. With a total of 74.4 million registrations, ccTLDs now represent over 40% of the total domain registrations worldwide.

Taking a look at the top ten TLDs in terms of number of registrations shows half are ccTLDs. In fact, .CN and .DE both out-rank .NET and .ORG!

The numbers add up to this: ccTLDs represent a significant sales opportunity to Resellers. Ignore this trend and you will miss out on a real area with strong growth potential.

We’re continuing to look at ccTLDs and we’re committed to adding more ccTLD options for our Resellers in the future.

Summer is almost over with the arrival of Labour Day. We have reduced hours for this September holiday long weekend. Hopefully, your weekend will include splashing in big pools of water like our Reseller Service guy:

Here’s our hours by department for Monday, September 7th, 2009:

Have a great weekend!

Got .INFO? Starting today and continuing until year end, Afilias and OpenSRS are offering you a great new promotion. .INFO domains will be sold at the Registry cost of $0.00, meaning you only pay your OpenSRS Management fee and the ICANN fee for any .INFO domain names you sell during the promo period. (You save $6.75 per domain and pay $3.18.)

Why .INFO?
Earlier this year, we talked all about why .INFO is a great gTLD. Check out the .INFO resources available for you and your customer in that same post.

How to Sign up:

The promotion applies to new, one-year registrations or the first year of new, multi-year registrations only. Transfers and renewals are not eligible. The discount is paid in the form of a rebate to your Reseller account within 10 days of the start of the subsequent month.

To take advantage of this promotional pricing, you will need to Sign up here.

Monday, August 3rd, 2009 is a Civic Holiday in most parts of Canada.

As a result of the holiday, Tucows headquarters in Toronto will be operating with reduced staffing:

• OpenSRS Technical Support will operate as usual, with regular hours.
• Compliance, Payments, Service Bureau and Special Processing departments will all be closed Monday.

We’ll be back to our regular hours on Tuesday.