Are you .XXX cited?
It’s the nexxxt big thing and one of the biggest talking points in the hosting industry for years. This week we launched our .xxx domain registration and with lots of debate but mixed with a fair degree of mis-understanding we thought we’d try and explain a bit more. .XXX will clean up the internet, of that there is no doubt. The big players in the adult industry are behind the initiative and for them there are lots of benefits. The .XXX domain offers a new sign of professionalism that member of the adult industry are keen to get behind. All .XXX sites are vetted by McAfee for malware and other internet threats so users know the site is safe and can be trusted. Presenting your business as a trusted adult brand should increase customer confidence, resulting in more traffic and more paying customers. For those in the industry a .XXX domain a very wise investment. A kind of a seal of trust for adult sites and it is the only gTLD dedicated to the adult industry. Protect your business too Yet, it is not just adult industry organisations that should be interested and looking to secure xxx. domains. As with any new domain suffix, there will be many cybersquatters looking to piggyback the name of an established brand. Your name might not be easy to protect under intellectual property law but you can minimise the risk by registering your own name.xxx before anybody else does. Even if another registrant doesn’t intend to benefit from your reputation, can you afford for your ‘brand’ to be associated with adult content? If you secure the domain name yourself nobody else can use it. If you do have an existing Trademark in the name you can even use the Sunrise B procedure to block anyone from using a domain for a one-off, lifetime fee. How do I get my .XXX domain? As we’ve said .XXX is the biggest domain name launch for years, so we’re offering you a wide range of choices to ensure you have the best chance of securing your chosen domain name. Our pre-sales page explains more, but in all cases you can place your pre-order now and be sure to be at the front of the queue when applications open. Are you exxxcited about .XXX? Can the internet use it as a way of better policing certain types of content.
The birth of a new domain name
You might have noticed that we’ve launched a few new domain name extensions on 123-reg over the last year or so. Most recently, it’s been the turn of .so domains – you’ll be able to register domain names ending in .so from 1 April 2011. (No, we didn’t have any choice over the date. And no, it’s not a joke.) How new domains are created New domain names aren’t just created and released overnight. The exact process depends on what sort of domain name extension it is: Country code domains, like .uk (for the United Kingdom), .cn (for China) and .co (for Colombia) are administered by the relevant country’s government. In practice, an appointed organisation usually runs the domain. In the UK, Nominet does this. Every country has its own country code. It’s up to them how they use it. Other domain extensions – like .com, .mobi and .info – are created by ICANN, the organisation with overall control of the domain name system. Getting a new extension created is very complicated, though plans are afoot to liberalise the market (mind you, you’ll still need hundreds of thousands of pounds and creating a new extension could take a year or more). Anyway, let’s just suppose that a new domain name’s about to hit the market. What happens next? The stages of domain name registration Once a new domain name extension has received the seal of approval from ICANN, there are a series of stages to the registration process: Sunrise. During the sunrise period, it’s usually only trademark holders who can register domain names. Every trademark holder gets checked individually, to make sure their application is legitimate.The idea is that trademark holders can protect their brand early – although there’s usually a hefty premium to register at this stage.Sunrise is for people who can prove they have the ‘right’ to a particular domain name. Landrush. At landrush stage, anyone can apply to register any domain name. However, they’re not sold on a first-come-first-served basis. Instead, domains are allocated at the end of the landrush period.If more than one application is received for a domain name, it’s auctioned off.Landrush is for people willing to pay more to secure a domain name. Both the sunrise and landrush stages are usually run by the domain name registrar – the organisation that manages that domain name extension. Each stage can last a month or two. It’s not until the third stage that domain name companies like 123-reg usually start selling the domains: General availability. Following on from sunrise and landrush, general availability is when anyone can take their pick of the remaining domain names.When we talk about pre-ordering domain names on 123-reg, it’s in preparation for general availability – if you place a preorder with us, we automatically try and register your domain name(s) the second general availability starts.General availability is the ‘free for all’, when domains become available at more reasonable prices. Although not every new domain name follows this process exactly, most are released in a similar manner. As for our new .so domain names? You can pre-order up until 31 March. If you don’t get your pre-order in time, come back to our site on or after 1 April, when you’ll be able to register .so domain names there and then.