| August 4, 2008 |
For the third time in about a month Snapnames has had a major system outage. The two outages
that were most noticeable happened on weekends. While the outage notification e-mail from
Snapnames says it is a vendor issue, the real question is why these outages so frequently
occur on weekends and which party is not handling the support relationship correctly.
Snapnames Outage
|
| June 16, 2008 |
Have been having a lot of problems with iPowerWeb.com since they completed a server migration last
weekend. Part of the move was changing PHP to run as a CGI script, and turning on an outbound
firewall limiting outbound connections. This is important if you have a database located elsewhere,
or if you want to do off-site backups. Dealing with their tech support has been difficult because
shared hosting calls are directed to a non-technical call center in the Philippines, and they are
not responding to trouble tickets. Moral of the story: shared hosting is not worth the hassle.
|
| March 12, 2008 |
Had to dig up some historical domain sale and found two sites:
DNSalePrice.com - very very slow, but lots of history
NameBio.com - slick, but only 20% of the data on DNSalePrice.
I was really surprised that so few resources exist for this market. It would seem prudent that sites
like Sedo and TDNAM would want everyone to know current sales prices. Either it is too much work, or
they are worried expectations will rise even more, cutting out on their braed and butter, sub $1000
sales.
|
| March 7, 2008 |
Another brand protection company has completed registrar registration. With the large amount of
trademark infringement in the domain space, it's surprising there aren't more brand protection
companies filing to be registras.
Netenforcers
|
| October 18, 2007 |
Looks like another multi-hour, prime time, core router problem at Dreamhost. At a certain point
I would think that people would stop hosting with them. I have been migrating all my sites off
of their servers since a series of server issues in the first half of this year. Unfortunately,
it's not always easy to move a website.
Major
networking issues
|
| September 24, 2007 |
I woke up today to complaints that one of my websites was down. It was hosted at Host Gator, who's
motto is "we eat up the competition". When I called them, they said that my entire account had been
deleted off of their web and DNS servers without explanation. Perhaps their motto could be "we eat
up users' accounts"? They refunded me three months automatically, so I must give them some credit
for being proactive. However, the fact that they don't back up anything on their servers is where
my greatest concern lies.
Bad Webhosting
|
| September 17, 2007 |
Not a week goes by without another two hour outage at DreamHost. Again they are dealing with network
issues, but they are getting better about the proactive communication with customers. Chatter on the
status messageboard is reminding some shocked new customers about the 97 day money-back-guarantee.
DreamHost Outage
|
| September 14, 2007 |
Sedo is the next venue to sell some of the premium .MOBI domains. What makes this remarkable is the switch
from "premium" live auctions such as TRAFFIC to the less exciting, and less profitable online auctions. It
is possible that the poor showing at the last TRAFFIC where only a single premium .MOBI was sold because
of the high reserve prices. Some of the 100 domains on auction at Sedo don't even have reserve prices. It
will be interesting to see how this auction performs because it will likely affect .MOBI estimates and
private party pricing.
.MOBI auction at Sedo
|
| September 3, 2007 |
Fabulous has gone public with the final release of Fabulous+ putting numbers to the madness: 15 templates
and over 4000 images. The new interface for previews is the coolest part, and encourages viewing multiple
designs.
Fabulous Plus launch
|
| August 27, 2007 |
More router IOS problems at DreamHost. The question that needs to be answered is why a single problem
with their network equipment can take down their entire network infrastructure? I think they are a great
group of people, but as a customer the ongoing network problems and lack of phone support are hard to stomach.
Network
Problems - router issues persist
|
| August 27, 2007 |
The march to add IDN TLD's takes another step with IANA's board approval to create IDN .test TLD's and
insert them into the root servers.
IDN .Test Root-Zone Evaluation
Finalized
|
| August 27, 2007 |
NameDrive was taken out by a massive DDOS attack last week. What makes this particularly interesting is the
length of the outage, approximately 24 hours. Most parking companies are dealing with DOS attacks on a
daily basis, but the larger companies have better systems in place to deal with them. While the outage was
reimbursed, it's another reason to park with larger companies who can mitigate the risks or at least
compensate members for their problems.
Internet ramraiders rear-end
domain parking service
|
| August 16, 2007 |
How comfortable would you be knowing that your webhosting company wants your website? I would think them
savvy and smart, but I wouldn't think that they were really looking out for my website's best interest. The
domain space is so sketchy that webhosting companies should be on their best behavior. There is only so much
room for Direcnic's and RegisterFly's.
"DOMAINS FOR SALE? WE'RE
INTERESTED."
|
| August 16, 2007 |
DreamHost is down again. But this time, they've turned off customer comments on the DreamHostStatus webspage
because they realized that their customers were taking out all their frustration on the appropriate party.
"DreamHost is experiencing a return of network
problems"
|
| August 15, 2007 |
A lot of angry DreamHost customers arguing on the DreamHostStatus.com forums. Looks like DreamHost network was
down for about 3.5 hours, starting around 11:15 AM PT. No word yet from DH on the cause.
DreamHost reports "Network
Slowness"
|
| May 29 2007 |
The final chapter on RegisterFly will be massive Icann changes, the second-to-last chapter will be the lawsuits,
but the first of the last chapters is how the domains went from RegisterFly to GoDaddy. As the article leads,
"Bob Parsons has hit a homerun." Indeed.
GoDaddy Scores 850,000 Domains From
RegisterFly
|
| March 28, 2007 |
OneUglyDomain has taken the One Red Paperclip marketing concept
to domain names and appears to be getting quite a bit of attention and quality domain exchanged. If he can
actually trade up at a million dollar domain, then it will simply reiterate how imporant eyeballs are when it
comes to selling domain names.
oneuglydomain.blogspot.com
|
| March 15, 2007 |
Snapnames has redesigned the look of their site. Dare I say that it looks
more like Pool.com? Instead of adding more colors, perhaps they could have
improved their backend system which dropped my favorite back-ordered domain on Sunday.
SnapNames
|
| March 3, 2007 |
While waiting for the Spanish .ORG registry to open, I found a few interesting sites.
DailyDomainer
DomainNews
|
| March 2, 2007 |
How does eNom have over 8 million domain names? They don't even have a system for
retreiving a lost username. You can't even open a support request online, because that requires a username too. The
only option is a phonecall with 20 minute hold times. Are they stuck in 1998 deliberately?
eNom sucks
|
| March 1, 2007 |
How do webhosting companies without telephone support stay in business? The two worst offenders are
DreamHost and OnSmart. The strange thing
is that OnSmart is a million times better than DreamHost because they have a chat window on their homepage that is
staffed 24x7, while most server outages at DreamHost take 30 - 90 minutes to resolve.
DreamHost
|
| February 26, 2007 |
Did you ever wonder why some hosting companies are cheaper than others? One of the cheaper solutions out there is
Server Beach with dedicated servers starting at $79/month. What do you get
for that money? Well, today working DNS server would not be part of the bargain. Their ironically named "GeoDNS"
DNS service has fallen victim to a single hardware failure "in
(their) San Antonio datacenter", according to VP Robert Miggens.
San Antonio NameServer switch down
|
| February 25, 2007 |
No updates since Friday on the RegisterFly registrar disaster when they reported new problems with the old owner hacking
their website and systems. Can it only get better from here?
www.RegisterFlies.com
|
| February 23, 2007 |
The RegisterFly disaster is getting better and worse at the same time. Their management team has finally stepped up
but so has ICANN. The new CEO has mortgaged his house to fix the problems, whils ICANN is threatening to revoke their
certification as a registrar. This all started when RegisterFly illegally transferred their customer domains from eNom
to themselves. Now the old CEO is ousted and sites like RegisterFlies are making
sure the customers are not forgotten.
With
RegisterFly in Chaos, ICANN Threatens Action
|
| February 21, 2007 |
Eric Sinrod of the legal firm Duane Morris writes about the increasing chance of
not losing domain names to trademark holders under the ICANN Uniform Domain Name
Dispute Resolution Policy.
Big
names may not prevail in domain disputes
|
| February 8, 2007 |
From an outage e-mail "...the generator became unstable due to the encountered temperatures and began
to lose power. We decided - in the best interest - to perform an emergency shutdown of the entire Data
Center power grid and to resolve all power related problems."
IX Web Hosting
|
| January 26, 2007 |
Good article that gets the terminology and markets correct, for a change. Lots of good information about the larger
venture-backed domain-hoarding companies. But even more importantly, they see where the money is going and quantify
how much the market is heating up.
Cyberspace land grab
|
| January 26, 2007 |
GoDaddy is becoming more and more proactive about violations of its TOS. In this case they brought down a domain because MySpace
complained that it had listed user passwords. Word to the wise: don't use GoDaddy if you have any user-generated content.
GoDaddy makes
site go away
|
| January 22, 2007 |
1and1 is pissing me because they do not support Internationalized Domain Names, and becuase their tech support is
frustratingly slow and stupid. However, they still offer $5.99
domain registrations which still makes it worth it.
www.1and1.com*
|
| January 11, 2007 |
Dotster just launched a new consulting service called MyPR offering consulting on a variety of topics including
blogs, podcasts, and press releases. Their prices are high, and perhaps not appropriately targeted for the majority of Dotster
customers.
www.dotster.com/other/mypr/
|
| December 27, 2006 |
|
| December 7, 2006 |
SearchFeed was able to grab the highly visible UTube traffic. I think Google should
have bought that site for a better ROI. Anyhow, if you're a huge site looking to monetize, check them out.
www.SearchFeed.com*
|
|
|
| December 1, 2006 |
DreamHost has a blog. Probably not news to most of you. Their Anatomy
of a(n ongoing) Disaster.. entry is particularly insightful.
blog.dreamhost.com
|
| November 14, 2006 |
Another great place to buy domains on the after-market is DotCom Agency. Their slogan says it all, "Premium domain names - no
dashes, no numbers, just great Dot Com names."
www.DotComAgency.com
|
| October 23, 2006 |
Looking for trends in the domain name market? See what was registered recently for some of the TLDs.
www.RegisteredOn.com/
|
* - In addition to other sponsorships on this site, we may receive compensation when you click on this link, or if you purchase services from this company.
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