Leap Day Domain Registrations Explained
By: James Koole on February 28th, 2012
Posted in: General
Tags: domain names, leap year
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Tomorrow is a leap day – February 29 – an extra day that shows up in February ever four years (well, sort of. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years).
That has some implications for domain registrations. Sadly, it does not mean you get four years for the price of one.
Rather, most registries have policies defined to account for registrations that happen on leap days.
In most cases, domains registered on February 29 will expire the following year on February 28. A few registries use March 1 instead.
That begs the question – is it possible for a domain to expire on February 29? The answer is yes depending on the specific extension and registry policies.
For example, if you register a .COM domain on February 29, 2012 for a four year term, you’d expect the domain to expire on February 29, 2016. However, the registry policy states that .COM domains registered on February 29 will always expire on February 28.
Does that mean that there will be no expiring .COM domains on February 29? A quick check around seems to suggest that the answer is yes. Anyone have a more definitive answer?
You can consult documentation for a list of which registry uses which dates for expiry. Check page 72 of the Reseller’s Guide to Domain Name Registration and Management. You’ll note that .BZ, .IN and .WS do in fact allow four year registrations done on leap days to expire on leap days (assuming there is one four years after the registration).
Crystal Peterson from .CO Internet has said in a blog post today that a four year .CO domain registration done on March 1, 2012, would lead to a domain with an expiry of February 29, 2016. Anyone care to test that hypothesis tomorrow?
The good news? OpenSRS has all the logic built in to properly account for and handle leap year registrations for all TLDs and services.
Enjoy the extra day!
If you’re familiar with the bulk domain name tools we already offer through the existing Reseller Web Interface (RWI), some of the features will be familiar to you. Simply select the names you wish to modify, then select the action, and you can perform all the changes currently available today through the existing RWI. There are, however, some great changes and upgrades:
You can now easily follow the progress of your bulk change request using the control panel’s real-time progress bar. From this screen, you’ll be able to track progress of a job, view the estimated time to completion, and even start/stop existing jobs. It makes managing and tracking the progress of a bulk change simple.
The ICM Registry, operator of the .XXX domain extension, has let us know that on February 14th, 2012, all failed Sunrise A and B applications will start to become available for registration starting at 16:00 UTC.