By: James Koole on March 6th, 2013
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: goMobi, Publishing Service
Comments: 2

Note: goMobi has pushed back this release to March 21.

On March 12 March 21, goMobi plans to release an update to the goMobi mobile website service. Full details on the new features and enhancements to goMobi are available in a PDF provided by goMobi. You can view that document in this article in the Release Notes area of our Help & Support Portal.

Some of the highlights of this release include:

• New feature: Find Us feature – adds “Verify Map Location” in the dashboard when adding your location to the site
• New feature: New sharing options – business social network LinkedIn has been added
• New feature: Added the ability to add any 3rd-party source code to features that have a WYSIWYG editor
• New feature: New Site Cookie notification feature (for EU privacy compliance)
• Usability improvement: ‘Create Page’ character restriction removed so users can create pages with more content
• Usability improvement: Activated features will be displayed at top of Features list for easier editing

The update will happen automatically for all goMobi sites. There’s nothing you need to do to enable access to these new features on sites.

By: James Koole on February 20th, 2013
Posted in: Reseller Resources
Tags: Reseller Support, resources
Comments: 2

With the new OpenSRS Help & Support Portal now fully up and running for a few months now, I thought it would be good to show you some of the places where we are sharing important information with you.

Announcements

• Upcoming Maintenance: we’ll post things like registry maintenance announcements and planned OpenSRS maintenance here. We’ll continue to provide realtime updates via OpenSRS Status.
• Release Notes and Change Logs: Starting on February 28, 2013, we’ll be posting a changelog for OpenSRS Services. This posting will detail the changes made to OpenSRS services, the API and Control Panels in the last month. Going forward, this log will be posted on the last Thursday of the month. You’ll also find release notes for things like goMobi, SiteLock and other services that are provided by third-party vendors when available.
• Service Bulletins: In the event of unplanned outages or other disruptions of service, we endeavour to provide a summary of the reasons behind the disruption and what we are doing to prevent a reoccurrence. You’ll find those bulletins within a day or two of the conclusion of the outage or interruption. We do our best to be as open and transparent about any issues as possible and we invite your comments if you have any.

Services Knowledge Base

Those visiting the portal on a regular basis will note that we’ve been steadily adding articles to the Services Knowledge Base. It is our intention to continue to add content here to help answer some of the questions that you might have without requiring you to open a ticket.

The search function in the new portal is pretty effective and if you create tickets directly in the portal, you’ll be given suggestions for articles that may hold the answer to your question.

Over the last couple of months we’ve created dozens and dozens of new articles in the various categories. You’ll also note that we’ve moved content related to specific policies and documentation for certain ccTLDs to the Services Knowledge Base in the Domains category.

Community Forums

Last but not least, we’re seeing increased activity in our Community Forums since moving from the old forum software into the new, unified portal. Feel free to drop in and ask any questions that you might have there. Unlike our previous forums which were primarily user-to-user, our support staff are monitoring things fairly closely and are happy to step in and answer your questions there.

By: James Koole on February 14th, 2013
Posted in: Announcements
Tags: Holiday Hours
Comments: 1

Our Toronto office will be closed on Monday, February 18th, 2013, for the annual Family Day holiday here in Ontario. This is a mid-winter holiday celebrated in most Canadian Provinces. The idea is to give people a long weekend break in February, and a day off work and school to spend time doing stuff as a family.

Most of us will be doing just that (including Payments and Compliance), but some staff will still be in the office to help you out if you need it. Reseller Support will be available as usual (by phone and live chat between 8am and 8pm EST, and via email) despite the holiday.

We wish a happy Family Day to our resellers in Canada, and also a happy President’s Day to our friends south of the border.

By: Erik Bartz on January 24th, 2013
Posted in: Industry News, OpenSRS Services
Tags: New gTLDs, OpenSRS Domain Service
Comments: 0

By now you’ve heard about the new gTLD program in the works at ICANN; concerning the text right of the dot. It has been in the works for quite a while now and looks like it will be another year or two before all the dust settles on the initial 2,000+ applications. So far we haven’t really talked about it, unlike some of the other registrars, because frankly there isn’t a whole lot of actionable news yet to share. We have however been following the developments quite closely, and like the rest of our domain business we’re going to bring our resellers as many of the new public gTLDs as possible.

In the meantime, we’ve set up a new page on the site explaining our position and outlook, along with a high-level overview of the roll-out timeline. We’ll be updating the page as new major developments come out, and when we get closer to actually having a new gTLD in the OpenSRS platform we’ll make sure you know about it in advance. We also invite you to hop into our community forum and ask us and the community any questions you have about the new gTLDs.

By: Erik Bartz on January 22nd, 2013
Posted in: Industry News
Tags: SSL, SSL Service, Trust Service
Comments: 0

We just found some interesting third-party research from the Baymard Institute regarding consumer’s perceptions of SSL and Trust seals. The survey, from January 2013, specifically focused in on e-commerce websites and gave the following results, showing Trust seals outpacing all of the SSL seals with the exception of Norton.

Its an interesting article and I recommend clicking through to read more about the results and some of the implications. Including their suggestion sites show multiple seals to increase perceived site security; while also of course improving site security.