Applications will be accepted from May 10 to June 8, 2012 at the CIRA website.

.CA Members and Registrants can play a key role in guiding the future of the Internet through their participation in the Nomination Committee Slate. CIRA will be inviting .CA Members and Registrants to participate in this stage of the 2012 CIRA Election.

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.

If you know of anyone you think would make a great addition to the CIRA Board, please consider nominating them for the upcoming elections. Applications will be accepted by CIRA from May 12 to June 10, 2011 at https://elections.cira.ca/2011/en/nom_com_nominees.html.

If you want to help spread the word about the CIRA Board of Directors nominations and elections, CIRA provides a PDF information sheet to help explain the process and why the CIRA Board of Directors is an important part of the management and stewardship of the .CA domain extension.

Winners will receive a cheque for $5,000 from CIRA.

The .CA Impact Awards celebrate hose people who are using their .CA websites to make a positive difference in the lives of those around them. The impact can be social, cultural, political, technological or economic. .CA Impact Awards are available in four categories: E-Learning, Small Business, Not-for-Profit, and Web Technology.

Tell your Customers about the .CA Impact Awards

CIRA intends to email all .CA registrants about the .CA Impact Awards on January 19, 2011. If you are a .CA reseller, help get the word out and share this news with your customers! Feel free to blog it, tweet it, post it on Facebook or create an email campaign.

Who knows, maybe one of your customers will take home $5,000 from CIRA!

We thank all of our Resellers for their help and patience throughout the transition process. The result is a better experience for .CA domain registrants and a .CA domain extension that’s much easier to sell and support.

Locking your .CA Domains

We do have one important follow-up note for Resellers with .CA domains in their accounts. With the transition to the new platform, domain locking is now available for .CA domains. The default state for domains after the transition is “unlocked” so you will want to lock the .CA domains in your account to provide an added level of security to the registrants of those domains.

Using the “Bulk Domain Change Management” section of the Reseller Web Interface makes this a pretty simple task:

• Click on “Bulk Domain Change Management”. Then click “Bulk Domain Search” which will allow you to get a list of all the .CA domains in your account.
• Search for “*” and select .ca domains in the “Search for Domains by TLD” section. Add your email address and click “Results to File” to run the search.
• In a few minutes you’ll receive a list of the .ca domains in your account. Copy the list out of the email and then paste it into a text editor and save it as a .txt file with one domain per line.
• Return back to the “Bulk Domain Change Management” screen and click on “Domain Lock” to start the locking process.
• On the next screen, select “Upload a list of items” and then “Choose File” to upload the text file you just created. Add you email address to get a confirmation email when the bulk change is completed. Then select “Lock Domain(s)” and click “Submit” to lock the domains.

Here’s a quick screencast tutorial demonstrating how to do it:

The CIRA registry is unavailable throughout the 24 hour transition period. That means no new orders, or changes to existing .ca domain names. All .ca domains will continue to work at all times during the transition.

CIRA expects to be back up and live on the new platform tomorrow (Wednesday) at 9am EDT and we’ll resume taking .ca orders at that time.

In the meantime, you can stay up-to-date through OpenSRS System Status and here at the Reseller Blog. For a complete rundown of what’s changing, visit our CA Transition page.

You might also want to follow us on Twitter and CIRA also has a number of Twitter accounts that they use to pass along important information:

• @OpenSRS
• @CIRANEWS
• @CIRASystems – providing updates on the CIRA platform
• @cira001 – CIRA CEO Byron Holland

Test Environment Updated

Resellers with API integrations for .CA domains are encouraged to test them using the Horizon Test Environment which has been updated and is now connected to the new CIRA Registry Platform Test Bed.

The Reseller Web Interface (RWI) in the Horizon Test Environment has also been updated and now reflects what you will see after the Registry Transition takes place. Please familiarize yourself with the changes to how .CA domains are provisioned and managed.

For more information on timelines and to view a webinar held with CIRA about the changes, visit the CIRA Registry Platform Transition page we’ve setup to keep you informed.

Status Updates During the Transition

During, and after the transition, Resellers can get updates through OpenSRS System Status. You can subscribe to realtime status updates via email by visiting the System Status Subscription Centre.

CIRA is the steward of the .CA domain extension in Canada. Tucows has a long history of working with CIRA on its Board of Directors, and we encourage our Resellers in Canada to take an active role in CIRA, where possible.

You can visit this CIRA Nomination Committee webpage for more information about how to apply for a position on the Nomination Committee and the eligibility requirements. Feel free to pass this information around to other people that you feel might be interested or qualified to serve in this fashion.

“The phenomenal growth of dot-ca registrations is the result of increased awareness of the value of dot-ca and the trust Canadians place in it,” says Bernard Turcotte, President and CEO of the Ottawa-based Canadian Internet Registration Authority. “Dot-ca still offers the best opportunity to get the domain name you want when compared with the larger dot-com registry.”

“Dot-ca is reserved for Canadians and defines an organization or individual who meets Canadian presence requirements,” explains Mr. Turcotte.

According to the press release, when CIRA took over the .ca registry, there were 60,000 names registered there. By 2003, there were 250,000 .ca names registered and in March 2005, that number had doubled to 500,000.