123-reg.co.uk

We mentioned last week that Nominet has released its second annual domain name industry report (PDF, 1MB).

These things usually contain a lot of fairly interesting domain name-related data. Fairly interesting, that is, if you work in the industry every day, like we do.

If you have a more casual interest in domain names then much of what’s in there possibly isn’t very relevant to you.

So instead of just summarising the headline findings and linking through to the report, here are a few bits of information and practical advice you might actually find useful:

• Don’t let your valuable domain names expire
  According to the report, the number of cancelled domain names that then get re-registered is dropping. However, of domains that are cancelled, nearly 5% are snapped up within 10 seconds of their expiry. And over 10% are re-registered within a month.That means that if you let a valuable domain name expire, there’s around a 1-in-20 chance that someone else will register it within 10 seconds. Now that might not sound too risky, but if the domain name is one you’ve built a business on then it is actually quite a gamble. Read the rest of this entry »

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Not wanting Perl developers to feel left out after the PHP conference in Manchester we mentioned recently, there’s a grassroots Perl conference in London the week afterwards, on Saturday November 29th.

Perl has been round for a while, but it’s still widely used in all sorts of systems, including websites (indeed there’s quite a bit of Perl running 123-reg).  The London Perl Workshop, as it’s called, has one over PHPNW in being completely free — so you can come along and try it out even if you aren’t sure it’s your thing.  You still need to register though.

Despite having “workshop” in the name, it does have a conference format.  The schedule has 3 tracks of talks running through the day, to cover a range of topics and ability levels, and there’s also a fourth room with half-day tutorials on web programming for anybody in the mood for some serious learning.

I’ll highlight JJ’s talk ‘Online Retail with Perl’, because it’s about his experiences creating the gift and accessories shop Penny’s Arcade, which he registered with 123-reg — perhaps it can inspire other 123-reg customers?  Let us know if it does!

And of course as well as all the talks there’s a whole lot of socializing going on, a chance for drinking and networking with others in the UK Perl community (plus a few others who are flying in especially for the event, including Tim Bunce, creator of the ubiquitous DBI module for accessing databases in Perl).  See you there?

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We’ve just come to the end of the final session at today’s Nominet registrar conference. All-in-all, it’s been an interesting day. The most noteworthy session was probably David Hendon’s keynote (covered in the previous post), and the two panel discussions were expertly moderated by Sarah Montague.

A few points I’ve taken away from the conference today:

• The .uk domain name industry is more interesting than you might think at first glance. It really is central to the online economy in the UK, and so if you run a website or online business, it’s worth keeping an eye on what’s going on, and how it might effect you.
• Nobody seems quite sure what the impact of new domain extensions is going to be. One speaker summed it up nicely, saying that if 100 new extensions were created in a year, that’s two land rush periods (where everyone rushes to bag the best domain names) every single week. Quite how sustainable that is, and how new domain extensions will manage to get noticed in that noise are both very good questions.
• The government is clearly taking a real interest in how Nominet is run. I’ll leave others to comment on that, but it’ll be interesting to see how things develop in the next few months.
• There’s no doubt that the issues of inappropriate content and online dangers like phishing are things that everyone’s very concerned about. There are loads of ideas about how to counter them, but the general consensus seemed to be that knee-jerk reactions to specific events can cause more harm than good.

I’m off to see if I can meet some interesting people at the drinks reception. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about today’s event.

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David Hendon is Director, Business Relations in the Enterprise and Business Group at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).

It’s an awfully long job title, but he was introduced as “the civil servant responsible for the internet”, which, although not 100% accurate, should give you a reasonable idea of what he does.

His keynote speech here at the Nominet .uk Registrar Conference was interesting, and I’d expect to see it covered by the usual online news sites later today.

He spoke about the need for “confidence and trust in the internet”, and explained that the government’s mission was to “promote dynamic growth of all that’s positive, while attempting to mitigate all that’s negative” about the internet.

Up the list of priorities

With a major report, ‘Digital Britain’, due next year, Hendon explained that the issues of public trust and confidence in the internet are moving up the government’s list of priorities.

He questions whether typical internet users (the general public) draw much of a distinction between phishing, spam, objectionable content and other online problems. They just want them fixed, and to some extent they expect the government to be able to stop bad things happening online.

It’s part of the national infrastructure

The domain name system, continued Hendon, is a part of the national infrastructure. And he’s right; it is a vital element of the UK economy and without, it the online part of that economy might as well not exist. Read the rest of this entry »

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After a wide-ranging panel discussion the conference broke for lunch in one of Wembley Stadium’s restuarants. Big stadia are strange places when there isn’t an event on, and Wembley is no exception, with large open spaces devoid of people and long corridors which seem to go on forever.

Apparently it’s a kilometre to walk right round the stadium concourse, and having gone about a quarter of the way round for lunch, I can well believe that.

There are a few interesting faces here today, including a chap I was just speaking to who owns the .com domain names of a number of very well-known politicians, plus people from the whole spectrum of registrars – including domainers and larger registrars like 123-reg.

Conference discussion so far has centred on the introduction of new gTLDs (for background, check out our article here) and the effect parked domains have on domain name prices in the secondary market.

Over lunch, people mostly seem to be discussing what the strange white things on the pitch at Wembley are. Answer? They’re massive lights to encourage the grass to grow.

The next keynote is about to start, so I’ll try and update again after that.

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The first session of the Nominet .uk registrar conference has ended. The next session starts in 15 minutes, so here’s a summary of some of the interesting points.

First up was Bob Gilbert, Nominet Chairman. His quick introduction talked about a “dynamic and exciting” industry, but tempered by his opinion that the economic situation is likely to be “very severe”.

Next was Phil Kingsland, Director of Marketing and Communications for Nominet. He summarised the organisation’s Domain Name Industry Report (PDF, 1MB). Some of the key findings were:

• The overall rate of domain name registrations is slowing, but growth is still positive.
• There are 174 million active domain names globally
• There are about 140,000 new domain names registered every month. That’s about one for every person liing in Oxford, where Nominet is based.

One thing that really stood out for me is that lots of domain names are allowed to expire each year – but a fair proportion of these (100,000 per year) are snapped up by someone else within 10 seconds of the expiry.

That’s unbelievably fast, and really emphasises the need to keep an eye on your domain renewal dates. If you let one expire, there’s a good chance someone else will have it before you’ve blinked.

Following Phil was Matthew Yates, Campaign Manager for Nominet. He talked about the campaigns Nominet has been running over the last year or so – including the keepyour.co.uk campaign you might have seen mentioned on here previously.

He highlighted the fact that only 18% of all domain names are renewed automatically. It’s this figure, I think, combined with the speed at which domain names get snapped up after expiry, which really emphasises how important it is to manage your domain names well. Auto-renew is really easy to set up and use, yet relatively few domain owners use it. If you don’t, perhaps you should switch it on today!

There’s also a surprising 2.6% of people who let their own domain name expire, then re-register it with a new registrar. That’s really dangerous – especially when you remember you can transfer domains between registrars easily.

If you’re in that 2.6% then don’t run the risk of allowing your domain to expire before renewing it. Renew it with your existing registrar (whether that be 123-reg, or someone else), then use the transfer option to move it elsewhere. That makes it impossible for someone else to buy your domain and hold it to ransom.

The session was rounded off by Phil Kingsland again, who talked briefly about the new TLDs being proposed by ICANN. We’ve covered the issue here before, but Phil gave it some perspective.

Basically, nobody knows how many people will apply for new domain extensions, how many will get through or really what’s going to happen. He also revealed that Nominet have been approached to run any future .cym or .sco (for Wales and Scotland) domain extensions.

More to follow – there’s a panel debate up next, so I’ll try and cover that as it happens.

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The Nominet .uk registrar conference is being held today at Wembley Stadium. I’ve just arrived, after a hike round to find the right conference room.

The first presentation is just kicking off, with the Today Program’s Sarah Montague introducing, so I’ll be back with an update shortly.

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That’s the north west of England (so apologies to our readers in Oregon or Wester Ross or the north west of any other country), more specifically Manchester.

PHPNW08 is a PHP conference taking place in Manchester next week.  We know that lots of you use PHP on your websites, so we thought it worth highlighting.  It’s just one day, and on a Saturday so you don’t need your boss’s permission to go.  The conference website describes it as being for “developers, designers, managers or anyone else with an interest in the PHP programming language”.

Conferences are a great way of keeping up to date with what’s happening with a particular technology, and meeting others who work with it.  Grass roots events like this one (those run by enthusiasts rather than professional conference organisers trying to make money) are particularly good, not least because they are so cheap ‒ tickets are just £60, a bargain compared to some commercial conferences which charge £800 a day.

The talks at PHPNW08 are varied, both in their content and their level (beginners or advanced), and there are some on other technology which is often used with PHP, such as MySQL and HTML.  Check out the full schedule, and maybe we’ll see you there?

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Next Wednesday it’s the annual Nominet .uk registrar conference. The conference is being held at Wembley Stadium, and while it’s unlikely to be most exciting event that particular venue has ever hosted, it is a chance for all the .uk registrars (like 123-reg) to get together and catch up on the latest in the industry.

A few of us from 123-reg are heading along to find out what’s happening in the world of .uk domain names and, in a first for us, I’m hoping to live blog things as they happen.

I’ve been working in this industry for a year or so now, but the workings of Nominet are still a bit of a mystery to me. My aim is to understand a bit more about how the organisation responsible for taking care of .uk domain names works. By covering the event here I’ll try and help you understand it too.

Having said that, I’ve never covered an event like this before, so to some extent I’ll be making it up as I go along. That’s assuming, of course, the Wi-Fi works, my laptop’s battery doesn’t die and/or my mobile has a decent signal. If it goes to plan, look for posts, pictures and my thoughts, right here.

Have your say too

I’ll try and take notice of your feedback too, so please leave your comments either now or on the day. Got a burning question you want me to put to one of the panels? Let me know and I’ll do my best.

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In July, ICANN (the organisation in overall charge of managing the internet’s domain name system) announced it was going to allow the creation of additional top level domains (TLDs).

A top level domain is the part of a domain name that comes after the final dot. Existing TLDs include .com, net and .uk.

We covered this story at the time – you can read the original post here. It attracted some interesting comments so it’s worth skimming through the whole page.

A number of campaigns exist which are pushing for the creation of new TLDs including .berlin, .nyc and .pdx.

How it’s going to work

Since its original announcement, ICANN has issued lots of information explaining how new TLDs will work in practice. You can find all the details on the dedicated section of their website. The key document is the draft applicant guidebook (PDF), which explains how you can go about applying for the creation of a new TLD. Be warned: the document is 97 pages long and contains an awful lot of detail!

Everything in there is at a draft stage, and you can submit comments on the process up to 8 December. Some of the key points are as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

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