$\o/ Gandi$

Monday 18 January 2010

Being agile is important to us, and so we are pleased to bring you the first revision of Gandi V3 that takes into account your feedback (blog, twitter, forums, etc.)

Wednesday 13 January 2010

Ok, so it's not the right Episode number, but this version of Gandi represents a major turning point for all of us at Gandi that we have been looking forward to for a long time now: rewriting a number of processes that have not been totally satisfactory for you.

The first visible change is the new version of the website. This update will highlight (some will say shout) our values, and will bring to you improved ergonomics (who was it that asked for faster domain searches and the ability to attach tags to domains?).

Tuesday 5 January 2010

Before going into what we have planned for this year dear customer, I would like to share with you some of our accomplishments during 2009.

Thursday 17 December 2009

With its contract with ICANN allowing for 7% price increases per year Verisign has announced that it will again be executing this and raising the prices of COM domains to $7.34 from July 1 2010, and NET domains to $4.65. This has increased the COM price from its original base of $6 in just 3 years.

When we last spoke to Verisign at ICANN Sydney 2009 they suggested further price increases were unlikely. What's changed?

With the approach of the ICANN domain name liberalisation due early next year, this could either cement COMs status as a premium extension, or drive people to look for and explore other extensions. What do you think?

Monday 7 December 2009

With the addition of this highly-anticipated extension, we have completed the coverage of southwestern European countries!

In order to register a .PT domain, you must have a Portuguese taxpayer ID, as well as a document that proves that the domain name corresponds to a trademark, family name etc. (for example: the TVA number of the company Martin would be needed to register martin.pt).

If you do not meet this criteria, you can nonetheless register a .COM.PT domain. These domains are open to everyone, with the condition that individuals must provide a national ID number or passport number, and companies must provide their intra-Community VAT number.

The registration .PT and .COM.PT domains are sold at €24 ($35, or £22) excl. VAT per year under A rates. Transfers of .PT or .COM.PT to Gandi are available at only €1 ($1, or £1) for all.

See the .PT information page.

Wednesday 25 November 2009

Note: I am republishing this entry, because of the number of customers that are writing to us to express their surprise at the fact that they are not being charged for the renewal of their first share. As a reminder, your first monthly share is refunded whether you decide to keep it or not. So if you don't keep your share, we'll refund the cost of the first month, but if you do keep it, we'll renew it for the second month for nothing.

To help you test our hosting service without any risk, your first hosting share is 100% refundable! Which means you'll get your money back on your first share whether you stay with our service or not!!

(No, there's no fine print that says that this is only available for the next two days, 4 hours and 24 seconds, and if you have an IP address that ends in 256 and only if you have Hungarian nationality on your mothers' side and Finnish on your fathers... it really is for everyone

)

Friday 13 November 2009

Hello,

Today we have launched the functions allowing you to manage your own interfaces. You may configure up to 4 interfaces per server.

To add an additional interface, you will need to add additional IP address quota via the resource management interface.

Each additional IP address costs €1 excl. VAT per month (if paid monthly), or €10 (ex VAT) per year if paid annually, e.g. 2 months free!

This new function lays the foundations for us to provide you with some really cool features in the future such as an IP failover system, the utilization of IPv6 addresses or even creating a private networks between your servers.

As this has been at the top of your Wishlist for several months, we sincerely hope that this new feature will make you smile!

You can find documentation on this in our wiki here.

Monday 9 November 2009

From December 10th 2009 EURid, the registry that is in charge of the .EU zone, will allow domain names to be registered that include accented characters for the first time. This is of course a great benefit to the 28 countries of the European Union where accented characters are very common: http://www.eurid.eu/en/eu-domain-names/idns-eu.

By Leland Vandervort on Monday 9 November 2009, 11:43 - Hosting

Today we are opening the beta-test phase for the implementation of IPv6 on our hosting platform.

As a reminder, IPv6 is the successor to the current IPv4 upon which the internet is based, and given the generous attribution of the early IP addresses, the IPv4 address space is rapidly running out of available adresses.

Its replacement is gently making its appearance across the internet. An IPv6 address is made up of 128bits as opposed to 32bits for an IPv4 address. We are moving from 2^32 available addresses to 2^128 (excluding reserved allocations, of course) which gives us a few decades.. erm.. centuries to breathe!

If you wish to participate in the beta test phase, you must:

- Have some basic knowledge of IPv6
- Have a Gandi server in expert mode (i.e. with root access)
- Send us a request to participate to ipv6beta@gandi.net and include your gandi handle/user-id. (You will receive an email by return with the procedure to follow).

Initially, we will limit the beta test to approximately 50 servers, so don't wait to send in your request!

Thursday 5 November 2009

We are pleased to announce that Gandi now manages .am and .fm domains.

These ccTLD, while being the official extensions for Armenia and Micronesia, are frequently used for online radio stations, and who among us has not listened to internet radio?

Wednesday 4 November 2009

Our previous domain name discovery tour took us over the world's oceans, and introduced you to 5 new extensions managed by Gandi.

Here is another journey, where you can discover 6 new extensions that you can manage at your favorite domain name registrar. And since we went by sail last time, today's tour will be by plane.

Friday 16 October 2009

Recently Gandi expanded its domain name offering by boosting the number of extensions we provide. This doesn't just help us reach more customers internationally

, but allows existing customers to centralise their domain name portfolio in one place, particularly those that have some of these less common extensions.

The idea is to expand our offering so that all of our customers (current and future) can opt to transfer all of their domains to us if they are satisfied with our way of managing them.

This is why today, Gandi is offering you lower transfer prices for a large number of extensions (though the exact discount depends on the registry, see below):

.COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ, .NAME, and .US domains at €5.50 ($7.50 or £5.00) excl. VAT, with a year added to the expiration date,
.FR, .RE, .BE, and .EU at 5.50€ ($7.50 or £5.00) excl. VAT with the year added to the transfer date (e.g. the new expiry date is set to be 1 year from the transfer date)
.CH and .LI domain transfers are free (this is already the case, but not many people may know it

Contrary to what the majority of people think, transferring a domain name from one registrar to another will not result in any service interruption and will maintain all your DNS settings. What you need to remember however, is that you will need an authorization code (AKA EPP code, or auth code) in order to transfer your domain (with the exception of .BE and .EU domains, as you will be contacted by the registry), and this code must be provided to you by the registrar that you are transferring away from.

And while we've got your attention, we thought we'd remind you about the guessing-game contest we're having about "when will the one-millionth domain name be registered at Gandi?". This promotion will run up to the time of this actual domain registration (which of course we don't even know). In case you're interested, you can enter by trying to guess the exact date and time that the 1 millionth domain will be registered. The person that is the closest to this date will win a dream vacation of your choice!

Do you want to join the contest? It's free, and it is here!

As always, if you want to transfer your domains to Gandi, its over here!

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Since our hosting service has been released, you have been requesting it, and here it is!

Monday 28 September 2009

We have just added 5 new "exotic" extensions to the list available at Gandi. If you want to step onboard the magical Gandi cruise ship, I will be pleased to give you a tour!

Thursday 24 September 2009

A new version of Gandi AI, labeled 1.2, is currently available via the server module management page of your account. This version corrects many bugs and imperfections that were present in version 1.1. It also significantly improves the performance of Apache due to the replacement of the mpm-itk module by a per-user module.

We are also going to take advantage of this upgrade to implement two additional modules:

PunBB, an efficient open-source forum that is solid, light, and written in PHP
Magento, a (the?) open-source platform that allows you to create an online store. Many add-ons are available on the MagentoConnect platform, such as the possibility of customizing the design of your store, changing the language of your interface, or to activate the payment platform of your preference. Also note that Magento needs 2 to 3 shares to run correctly.

Set up your server at http://www.gandi.net/hosting

Tuesday 25 August 2009

Here we go! Since we're keen to celebrate our milestones with frivolous contests, we thought we'd launch a another one for this next milestone that may last a few months, as we're not there yet. We hinted at something like this in our earlier blog article when we passed 500,000 domains managed by Gandi.

Wednesday 5 August 2009

Last week, which came and went with the summer breeze, we added some wonderful services to what Gandi has to offer you...

Thursday 16 July 2009

Tuesday 7 July 2009

The success of the "Your server for free this summer!" operation is such that we have decided to have another promotion, which will be an extension of the previous one.

The first 1,000 free servers were given out in less than one week! Given the number of requests that we have received, we have even opened 102 accounts in addition to what was planned. Only here is the problem: there are many of you on the waiting list and at Gandi, and we want to be able to please as many as possible

The new promotion will therefore begin today. We are once more offering 1,000 free servers though this time, for only one month. The promotion remains, of course, without any purchase necessary, and you are free to keep your server by adding hosting resources to your account, or to let them expire.

The promotion that allows you to benefit from 2 free months by exchanging your monthly shares with fixed annual shares remains valid until August 31st 2009. For this, as a reminder, you just need to go to your "resource management" page, choose the number of annual shares that you want, and pay for your order. Once the shares have been added to your account, you can then remove the monthly shares that you no longer need. You will then be refunded for the time that remaining in the billing cycle for those shares.

Thursday 2 July 2009

Dear Customers,

As some of you may have noticed, we experienced a power outage from 11:30 AM to 3:30 PM (CET) today. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

The company which manages the datacenter, that houses one of our server rooms performed maintenance this morning on some of their electrical equipment. Unfortunately, a human error by the provider undertaking the maintenance led to a total blackout of the datacenter for several minutes. The outage impacted many major companies on the internet (Dailymotion, Skyblog, Pixmania, etc.), as well as a portion of our customers.

Our system automatically transfers data to another server room in the event of a problem and it was working normally until the threshold was reached too quickly. There are several reasons for this: a massive outage on a scale seldom seen, combined with our choice to build-up the other server locations gradually rather than all at once, a server rebooting process that still requires perfecting and the success of our free server operation...in short, a chain of events caused this outage for some of you.

It goes without saying that we will examine what we could have been done at our end to prevent this, for example, a quicker building up of the other server locations (the hosting operation helps this enormously), and the continued optimization of the rebooting script (in the event that the electricity gods or the datacenter's subcontractor are still out to get us).

Additionally, we will ensure we refund you for today, and are at your disposal for any additional requests you may have. We will be adding one day to the expiration date for all of the affected hosting resources throughout the day.

Please accept our sincere apologies for this inconvenience. We are working to ensure that our infrastructure is built-up in a way which assures good performance and excellent management, so that ALL of you can benefit from our technology.

Technical note: In the event of a Gandi AI server, if your server responds but one of your services (web, ftp, etc.) is not working correctly, you can fix this by simply stopping and starting your server from Gandi's website. In the event that you have an expert server, we recommend that you activate your account's emergency console and execute a fsck command on your disks.

Thursday 25 June 2009

Summer has come and this has put us in the mood to make you happy...

Friday 19 June 2009

As a long-time registrar, we are aware of the importance of keeping up with the internet, as well as trying to be at the forefront of changing technologies as we have done for the past four years. Now it's time to do the same with IPv6!

Tuesday 16 June 2009

Looks like our ICANN report has generated quite a bit of buzz. We've been covered in hundreds of online publications in 10+ different languages all over the world (summary will follow towards the end of the week).

But it seems we've hit a rich vein of SEO implications and generated a bit of buzz in that community. I've just come across this blog summarising the view of many of the SEO big boys. http://www.cornwallseo.com/search/2009/06/16/what-is-internet-liberalisation-and-why-should-you-care/

Interesting stuff and some good issues raised.

Jeff Behrendt says "The only clear winner of the proposed new TLDs is ICANN - at $185K per application, that’s a gravy train they are going to want to ride for many years."

That may be a little unfair. The fee is partly in place to make sure that ICANN can provide a good oversight to new extensions being created and protect trademark holders and general internet users from people setting up dodgy extensions or without the technical competency to run them. They've said this may come down (or up) as they get into the process. The fee should be high to ensure a higher quality of registry. This could be the beginning of the internet name space clear up, with higher standards leading to fewer squatted, speculative or advertising domains.

Michael Gray says - "In most cases opening the web up with more TLD’s is just going to create confusion for consumers". A point also made by Patrick Altoft about consumer confusion.

Well that seems to be what our consumers have said in our survey, so they agree. Though this liberalisation does open up the opportunity for specific TLDs and therefore potentially more simplicity and order. Michael's example of .movie is precisely along these lines, why have spiderman3themoive.com when you can have spiderman3.movie. The film industry could create this extension and protect its use solely for films. I think consumers could get used to that, and it will make more logical sense. More literal meaning to the name space. Roll on the sematic web. Tim Berners-Lee would be so proud

Hugo Guzman talks about the importance to big business - "The liberalization of domain extensions is already grabbing the attention of Fortune 500 companies".

This was supported by our research too. Still 2/3 were unaware this was happening, but those that did know were both excited and afraid of it, depending on which department you spoke to (e.g. excited = marketing, afraid = legal). Owning .brand could allow you to more effectively manage your brand as you create the association with customers that only sites on .brand are really yours. Though Steve Russell is right, this will cost a lot more than the $185k setup fee.

Anyway, food for thought, and thanks guys for your views.

Tuesday 9 June 2009

In 2010, the geography of the Internet is set to expand significantly, as ICANN will liberalise the market for domain name extensions. Gandi have commissioned a report from The FutureLab to see how consumers and businesses view this change.
More about the liberalisation process

Is this a squatting opportunity or a branding opportunity?

2/3 of businesses don't realise domain extensions are being liberalised next year. But those businesses that do know about this (like Deloitte) are excited about the opportunities in the areas of global branding. However corporates are also concerned that brand protection mechanisms need to be in place at the new registries, a view that has been raised by Microsoft.
More about the impact on businesses. Inc video interview with COO Gandi.net

Will the net become full of pointless domains?

Many consumers are confused about what liberalisation means and are concerned by the rise of squatting, phishing and advertising clogging up the domain space. However they do feel a real connection with localised domain names, e.g. .london, .paris. nyc, etc., and communities they are interested in, e.g. .music, .movie, .sport. There is also a growing Generation Y group interested in self publishing and being associated with certain brand names like .facebook, .myspace, .moonfruit.
More about the impact on consumers. Inc video interview with Marketing Director Gandi.net

Will this mean the end of 'Dot Com'?

Will 'Dot Com' decline with the advent of new geographical, brand and interest group based extensions. Or will this give Dot Com a chance to clean up its act and reclaim its prime real estate from pay per click ads, squatters and unresolved web addresses.
More about the evolving landscape

The evolving landscape of the internet following liberalisation

Why did Gandi commission this independent report

At Gandi we feel strongly about the future of the internet. We commissioned this report because we want to keep the domain space free for consumer and commercial use. We think this is an important enough issue that people need to understand the impact on them as consumers and businesses. How do you want these new domain territories to be governed? and are there lessons to be learned from how we've used our existing domain space?
More about the report

Download the report in full

To comment on this come to our special report pages

Friday 5 June 2009

Over the past few months, hopefully you will have noticed that we have been offering you an increasing number of European extensions. This is our current mission, and I can assure you that it sometimes borders on epic proportions!

This is so that we do not forget that are are part of a larger union, Europe, and that all of us have an important role to play this weekend: vote!