Author Archive

Join the CIRA Nomination Committee

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is seeking interested individuals from across Canada to apply to fill six open positions on its Nomination Committee. CIRA is the body that operates the .CA registry on behalf of Canadians.

Professional Canadians with committee experience and/or an interest in technology or the Internet are encouraged to apply.

According to CIRA, “the CIRA Nomination Committee plays a critical role in soliciting and selecting qualified candidates for the Nomination Committee Slate of CIRA’s Board of Directors Election. Its focus is to help build a Board of Directors that represents a wide range of views and interests, and ultimately contributing to the strategic direction of .CA and Canadian Internet policy.”

Applications will be accepted from January 3 to January 20, 2012. Visit http://www.ciraelections.ca for more information.

Holiday Hours from December 24 – January 3, 2011

Happy Holidays from the OpenSRS team!

Most of our offices will be closed from the afternoon of December 23, 2011 through to January 2, 2012. We’ll be back in the offices on January 3 all ready to serve you in the new year. As always our dedicated team of Technical Support reps continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.
Here are the specific hours by department:

Department	Dates and Hours
Technical Support	Regular hours
Payments	Closed Dec. 24 – Jan. 2 inclusive
Compliance	Closed Dec. 24 – Jan. 2 inclusive
ccTLD Special Processing	Closed Dec. 24 – Jan. 2 inclusive

Please note: during this closure, there will be no orders or requests processed for the following Service Bureau ccTLDs: .at, .fr, .ch, .li, .dk and .mx.

Happy Holidays to you, your colleagues and your families during this holiday season and the new year!

.PRO Domains Now Available

Today we added .PRO domains to the list of gTLDs available through OpenSRS.

To celebrate the launch, we’re also offering a .PRO launch promotion providing substantial savings off the usual registration fee. From now until February 15, 2012, .PRO domains will be available with a registry cost of $1.99/domain year for new registrations (the regular registry cost is $7.34/year). Resellers do need to sign up to take advantage of this promotion. Sign up here.

Remember that because .PRO is a gTLD, it’s priced using our ‘cost-plus’ pricing model so you’ll need to add your OpenSRS Management fee and the ICANN fee to determine the full cost for .PRO domains.

What is .PRO?

.PRO is an exclusive top-level domain reserved for use exclusively by licensed business and service professionals and entities internationally. All applicants meeting the following qualifications may register a .PRO domain name:

Provides professional services
Admitted to or licensed by a government certification body or jurisdictional licensing entity recognized by a governmental body that regularly verifies the accuracy of its data
In good standing with the licensing authority

You should be aware that registrants of .PRO domains may be asked to provide information related to their professional eligibility.

Documentation and Marketing Help

OpenSRS offers second-level .PRO domains. They can be provisioned and managed through the Domain Manager in OpenSRS Control Panel and via the OpenSRS API. Consult the documentation for more information.

Look at our .PRO information page for more details including a marketing kit containing the .PRO logo and some banner ads for your use in marketing .PRO domains to your customers.

.XXX is Live

In the end it was delayed a bit, but General Availability for .XXX happened today at noon EST and the .XXX domain is now fully online.

For any resellers who submitted pre-orders, you should see any successful orders in your account shortly. For those with Sunrise orders outstanding, you’ll see the first wave of successful applications in your account as well.

ICM Registry, which operates the .XXX domain says it will be a few more weeks before some remaining valid Sunrise applications are processed.

Marketing Resources

Our .XXX information page contains marketing help, advice on how to position .XXX domains and some additional information about how .XXX and the Sponsored Community works.

Congratulations to ICM Registry on a very successful launch.

goMobi v1.5 Now Available

Over the weekend, our goMobi mobile website publishing service was updated to v1.5. This new version brings some significant new features and also some really nice enhancements and improvements to existing features.

Here’s a run-down of the most significant changes that came with this release:

New Features:

New design templates to provide more options to style goMobi sites.
Seven new icon sets to choose from.
Integrated shopping cart feature in the Products section including payment integration with PayPal and Google Checkout.
YouTube video embedding.
Reviews/Testimonials integration with social networks like Yelp.
Custom form feature to allow for the collection of customer feedback or questionnaires.
Redirection code generator built in to the Site Builder.

Enhancements:

Enhanced QR code flyer creator.
Improvements to the site templates including additional site colour options.
A new ‘Click to Call’ icon has been added to the site header.
Google Maps now displayed for all locations with improved directions feature on supported devices.
Better WYSIWYG editor including the ability to insert images, links and easily customize text
Additional time-zone support.

More Information

We’ve updated the goMobi marketing page with more information on the features and benefits of goMobi. If you are already selling goMobi, be sure to let your users know about this exciting update to the service. We also have a complete rundown of the updates and new features in PDF format with screenshots and more. Click here to download.

For those not yet offering goMobi mobile websites, this update makes an already powerful and feature-rich tool even better. At just $2.50/month goMobi is a very affordable way to get customers started on the mobile web.