Gandi Bar - Tag - Gandi

Something new for Gandi.net...

Thomas — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:36:00 -0700

We hope you like our new look!

After a little over 12 years of refinements, we are pleased to release our 4th version of the Gandi web site graphical front end. It's deeper, cleaner, more colorful, clearer, more complete, and best of all, it can be customized to your preference and needs.

Our goal was not to radically change the interface. Most of you like the Gandi web site, and we don't want you to have to learn how everything works all over again. All the same knobs and buttons are there, in the same places. It's as if we did the wallpaper, floor and ceiling tiles, but left the doors and light switches in the same places. You can still find your way around in the dark.

We did fix things that were broken, or clunky, clarifying and adding text and making the different translations more grammatically correct, consistent, and clear. Text is higher-contrast and more readable, and the code, while invisible, has been reduced for display performance and to comply more closely with web coding standards. Finally, we took a look at how all the pages look as a whole, and tried to make them more consistent in appearance, while differentiated enough so you always know where you are.

Customization features!

The biggest change we made is one we didn't make, but left for you to do. We recognize that there are lots of users on Gandi.net, some of whom have very different ways of using the interface. With hundreds of thousands of active users, some individuals, some businesses, retailers, associations, etc. it's difficult to create an optimal display for everyone. In particular the tabular lists (domains, zone files, email packages, hosting, certificates, etc.) are hard to optimize across applications and use cases. To solve this conundrum, we developed a feature that allows you to choose what you want to display in these lists. A picture is worth a thousand words, so a video is worth, what? Ten thousand? Anyway, here is a short video showing how to customize a tabular list with your choice of fields.

Another new feature is that the screen space for the application is now bigger, and we have added a little extra feature on the right of the screen. Click the question mark tab on the right to display context-sensitive help, and see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for section you are in. You will also see our support people showing up in online chat on selected screens, so you can get quick answers to most questions, right there when you need them. Our agents are actual humans, and are fluent in the language you select from the menu when you go to chat. Our agents are all highly trained and experienced, but sometimes will have to answer you by email to get you the best answer possible, and maintain our support quality standards. If it's an easy answer, you will get it right away in chat, and if it needs research and actions by us, you will see it in email after a delay. If we can't answer you right away in chat, do not be disappointed. You will be able to ask your question via the usual support contact form, and get an answer in your email.

For those of you who are nostalgic and/or allergic to change, ye olde version v3 of the interface will still be available for a few days here. You can also use this to compare the two versions, or do something that you can't figure out how to do on our new version. If this happens, though, or if you find any problems, please do not hesitate to contact us on this email address so we can quickly address the issue. And if you have ideas for improvement, remember we always make our wishlists available, by product category, to guide our developers with your advice.
We have tested this new version internally for several weeks, but it's always possible we missed something obvious (headslap) or embarassing (facepalm)...

Finally, we will just mention that while this project required a lot of our time and energy for the last few months, now that it is available we will turn our attention to many usability improvements and new features that should delight many of you! We hope you will share your feedback, praise, criticism, and kudos! Thanks for reading.

Gandi V3.0.0 : A new hope

Ryan — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:49:00 +0100

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?).

A new version of the website you ask? Yes, in part, or at any rate, it's the tip of the iceberg

Why Gandi V3.0.0 and not just Gandi V3? This is because this first version serves as the foundation for the major upgrades that will follow, many of which will be transparent to you but nevertheless essential.

You probably already know this, but Gandi has been around for nearly 10 years now, and its IT platform is just as old. We haven't upgraded it until now because we've spent the last 4 years playing catch-up at the product level which fell behind before we took over Gandi 4 years ago. This is not a secret to anyone, but its something we've been working to correct.

This product prioritization led to a number of limitations within our infrastructure, something that we were perfectly aware of but unable to change quickly. Not only did we have our own ideas for improvements, but we had many many ideas submitted by you for how to make our services better.

So here we are, the implementation of these new features will begin with a major overhaul of our website. It is therefore with pleasure, and after many months of behind-the-scenes work, that we present to you our shiny new website. You can't miss that the general look and feel of our website has continued to evolve but stays true to Gandi's roots. A big thanks to Steven for this, Gandi's own graphic design Jedi

We are also shipping out some new features with version 3.0.0, notably:

the ability to add tags to each of your domains, so that you can sort them by family,
an incredibly fast multi-extension search capability,
a new domain and hosting purchasing system with a shopping cart that is finally dynamic.
an entirely new real-time news system that keeps you better informed of maintenance alerts and other important announcements. This system brings you our news in the form of an information banner which is incorporated directly into our website.

We're not going to get into the details of the upcoming additions and release dates here, as they are scheduled to roll out in phases over the first quarter of 2010 and beyond. This being said, each new version will be accompanied by a Gandibar post. The only thing that we can say for now is that, like our hosting wishlist we have also added a domain wishlist. Therefore, please feel free to give us suggestions, as we are looking forward to seeing what new services you would like us to provide.

We're don't want to miss any opportunity to hear from you, as this is part of the engine that helps drive us forward!

Welcome to Gandi V3, and let us say for now: "To be continued..."

How the domain name industry works - part 1

Joe — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:40:00 +0100

Registry, Registrar, Registrant, (Registratum, Registrata, Registrunt). Ok, so the last 3 are made up words, and the domain name industry wasn't really founded in ancient Rome nor part of your everyday Latin dialect, but what do the first three words actually mean and how does the domain name industry work? We've been working in the industry for years, so we have a pretty good idea. But we can also understand why all this really can just sound like ancient Greek to many people and not mean a thing. So in the spirit of lifting the lid and keeping things honest (as Gandi likes to do), we thought we'd give you a quick overview of what it all means.

Who's who in the domain name world?
Which one are you? Well you're the registrant, the purchaser of domain names and the last link in the chain that runs from ICANN at the top to you at the bottom. But there are several layers it passes through to get to you. Let's take a look.

ICANN - Top Dog

Let's start with the big dog itself ICANN. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a body in charge of managing the domain name space. In its own words "ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers." It loosely the gTLD registries (see below), and sets policy around new domain extensions. Generally its a good guy, and the last word on domain disputes, though it is sometimes lofty, intellectual and bureaucratic (not that those are all bad things, an organisation like that needs to be careful).

Registries - They're Wholesalers Only

The registries are the managers of the TLDs (Top level domains), either gTLDs (generic, like .com), or ccTLD (country code, e.g. .uk, or .fr). When you buy a domain.com it is recorded in the registry's database and that is the ultimate record of your ownership of the domain.

The TLDs are created by ICANN and the rights to manage them are tendered to commercial companies in the case of gTLDs (e.g. .com is managed by Verisign), or for ccTLDs given to the national governments who in turn assign/tender their management to other organisations (e.g. Nominet in the UK for .uk, or Afnic in France for .fr).

But the registries generally don't sell direct to customers (or can't in some cases), so instead they sell domains wholesale to the registrars.

Registrars - They Sell You Domains Direct

Here's Gandi. Hurray! The Registrars are the commercial companies that sell one or more domain name extensions direct to you and me (or through resellers - see below). The top tier of these are ICANN accredited which is a greater 'seal of approval', but nowadays there are so many this doesn't necessarily mean much. (Gandi was one of the first to be accredited in 1999).

Registrars interface directly with one or more registries, they manage your details and billing relationship. They represent your interest at the registry and will usually be the first port of call for domain disputes. So they are important to you, particularly their service and policy towards disputes. Know your registry!! Which brings us to Resellers.

Resellers - They Sell on Registrars Domains

Resellers look like registrars, but they aren't. They are commercial companies selling domain names, but they don't have direct relationships with the registries, but instead use the technology of another registrar to manage the domain names. This means if your domain provider is a reseller, it is using another registrar, and you may not know who that is. Many domain companies are registrars for some domains, and resellers for others. Interestingly in the UK, most of the big domain companies are not registrars for the gTLDs, e.g. .com, .net, etc., instead they use the technology of other companies. This can be problem when it comes to registrar behaviour or disputes (more next time).

Gandi is a registrar for all its domains, and there are some reseller companies that use Gandi as their registrar.

You
It's you! Hurray!! You may be a company, an individual, an organisation, a ghost (well maybe not a ghost), but you are the purchaser of the domain name. You buy it from either a registrar (like Gandi) or a reseller. You should be the ultimate owner of the domain (you are with Gandi), though you should check the policies of your domain company to make sure they are not taking the ownership themselves and leasing it to you. You manage your domain via your registrar/reseller and they manage the records of your domain in the registry or registries (if you have lots).

So there you have it! Now you can entertain all your friends at dinner parties with your extensive knowledge of how the domain name industry works. Or hope that you get onto "Who wants to be a millionaire" and the last question is:

"In the domain name industry, the manager of the .com domain extension is know as":

a) Registrant
b) Registrar
c) Registry
d) Regicide....

(the answer is (c), (d) is about killing kings or something). Good luck!

Who is Gandi and why should I care about them?

Wendy — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:32:00 +0100

Ah a good question. Who is this strange and wonderful French domain registrar and hosting provider, and why should I believe they are wonderful? What does it mean to believe in domain name ethics? Well to understand Gandi you have to go back to the very beginning...

You see Gandi was founded out of the desire to create free and fair access to homes on the internet; your address, your domain name. Back in the murky days of 1999 the AFNIC (controllers of the .fr domain) had restrictions on selling .fr's, so that only companies and trademark holders could own them. This meant the average French individual could not buy one, so instead they bought the GTLDs, e.g. .com or .net.

But in those days the GTLDs were sold by an exclusive group of mainly US registrars, at reasonably punchy prices (some still sell for $35+ per year) and with some unsavoury terms (more about that later). The original founders of Gandi set about creating a registrar that was for everyone, that encouraged domain ownership, made it affordable and accessible.

Gandi became one of the first ICANN accredited domain registrar when it was opened up to new companies in 1999, and helped pioneer the domain market we have today.

Gandi slashed the price of domain names, selling at a fixed €12 price (only a small mark-up on the registry cost, and not a lot in 1999 when the Euro was worth less than a Dollar), so that it was more accessible to a wider audience.

And more importantly Gandi setup its terms and conditions so that the domain buyer was made the 'owner' of the domain, and not the registrar. This may sound very obvious (why wouldn't the person paying be the owner?) but was actually unusual back then. Instead domain registrars would often take your money, put the domain name in their own name, and then lease it to you. So you might find out a few years later when you wanted to leave that you didn't actually own the domain name at all, despite paying for it. Very dodgy.

But not Gandi. With Gandi you were always the owner of your domain, and this was a very important reason why Gandi developed a strong following in Europe and the US. For those that read the legal agreements and were passionate about how it 'should be', they found Gandi and stayed with us.

Nearly 10 years later, this hasn't changed. Gandi was bought in 2005, by an experienced team of internet entrepreneurs, Stephan Ramoin, CEO, Joe White, CFO/COO and Eirik Pettersen, CTO who had always believed in fairness, transparency and innovative, products and services on the internet. Gandi continues to push for a fairer approach to domain buying and selling, and customer led products and services. We take a stand against spammers, domain squatters, and dodgy practices in the industry. We build great products for you to buy or not as you choose. We don't spend money on advertising, instead we prefer that our customers are our advocates. If you don't believe in our services, we shouldn't be selling them!

We believe your domain is more than just a name but your online presence on the internet whether it’s a home for your business, project or profile. And as such should be supported and protected. We intend to provide an alternative set of products which support you to do this. As many of you know we released our revolutionary virtualised hosting product recently for our tech savvy customers and we will be launching tools for customers who want build well designed, hosted websites easily and quickly very soon.

So there you have it. Gandi was founded on the principle of providing services 'as they should be', honest, fair, reasonably priced and with your interests at heart. We welcome you to join us and make your home with us online. Viva l'internet!

(For those of you interested in a bit of net history, click here, an article written in 2000 looking at domain providers legal contracts. Network solutions was given a 1 out of 5 rating for the fairness of its contract, while Gandi was given 5 stars - "Three registrars currently enjoy a perfect five-star legal rating. Contracts with these companies tend to favor consumers. For example, a Paris-based registrar named Gandi.net states clearly in its agreement: "The client owns the registered domain name." Also, the firm can't change its contracts at will, except for fee changes.")

Gandi UK Team

Recruitment: ON!

Ryan — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:33:00 +0200

We are now hiring for two positions: one in Customer Care, and another in the Development team

And yes, these positions were anticipated; it is just more difficult to train new employees during a rush period

For the Customer Care position, we are looking for:

someone who is not afraid of human contact,
a positive attitude under any circumstance,
a person who is capable of dealing with heavy cyclic workloads (we are right in the middle of one now ^^),
someone with at least a general understanding of computers (basically, just knowing how to use one),
written and spoken English and Spanish (OK, if you only know English, we will consider your application all the same).
the rest we will teach you.

For the post of Developer, we are looking for an autonomous person who can nonetheless work in a team (this exists...really!):

A Jedi Master of Perl,
Experience with the internet,
Ability to interact with other human beings,
Able to successfully manage a large workload,

We are a small team compared to our competitors, though we are highly motivated and concerned by the future of our company and its unique work environment. We know what we have to do, and we do it.

If our project strikes a cord with you, and you want to contribute, please let us know at: emploi (at) gandi (dot) net.

Gandi V2.0 : Feedback !

Stephan — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 10:48:00 +0200

Now the new website is live, we will be happy to hear your comments.

Please keep in mind all personal issues should be escalated to the support team.

Here, you can react, make suggestions, anything that will improve your user experience.

This 2.0 is already being replaced by a 2.0.1, then a 2.1 will come soon, and so on : this is a continuous improvement process and we need your help to do so.

Gandi V2 : Old gandi.net website offline

Stephan — Wed, 31 May 2006 21:23:00 +0200

Ladies and Gentlemen ... please prepare yourself for the big show !!!!

Well, ok, that's not exactly the event of the year, but for our company, this is it : for the first time in the last past 6 years, we are going to change our website.

And to do that, we are shutting down the actual one in order to do the migration and we'll be back online in the coming hours.

Stay tuned here, we'll keep you posted !

Live from the delivery room

Ryan — Tue, 30 May 2006 20:48:00 +0200

A big sorry beforehand, for all of you who have been endlessly reloading our home page since this morning: your labor (and ours!) should FINALLY be rewarded very soon now ...

Which means, either tonight or latest friday's night.

EDIT : The release will be done tomorrow evening/night. To ask for your forgiveness, the first 100 domain names registered on the new website will be refunded (whatever the extension, but first year only).

If everything works fine, in the coming hours, we will shut down our site in order to procede with the switch, and the new site should be available some time thereafter.

I know this information is somewhat vague, but like all new parents, there are still some points we are unsure about

Not to worry, though, we will keep you informed as things evolve.

As you can see, no one is drinking, resting, or challenging our friends from Canard PC on video games...

DDOS attacks

Stephan — Sat, 20 May 2006 22:34:00 +0200

We, like others registrars in the world such as (Tucows , Joker or UltraDNS), have been the victim of a vast targeted attack of our servers.

We have been under attack since this morning by well motivated people who, and this is a first to my knowledge, launched several large scale distributed attacks against our servers. The Gandi network was in line with the state of the website: sufficient for "semi-automatic piloting", but not for this kind of thing. We had redundancy, but the scale was such that all of our machines fell one after eachother.

We have been working for the last months, growing our team from 6 to 23 people including 4 dedicated to the network, to transform our company to the way it should be, and the building site is phenomenal. The network was not overlooked in this transformation, and we are in the process of setting up a new one to protect us - as much as one can be - from attacks of this scale.

I make the point nevertheless of thanking the perpetrators of these attacks, as it motivates us only more to show them how much we are determined to continue our adventure to build a different kind of company. We are currently at our data centres, to put everything in place and secure the situation. Whatever it takes.

We offer our apologies to our customers, and will make sure that it does not happen again. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Let's (eu) dot the i's.

Ryan — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:48:00 +0200

Simple but important fact in the present context concerning our success rate of .eu domain name registrations made since the 7th of April.

This is not some kind of marketing statement (as we often see) and to tell you the truth I did not mean to write on it, the "we are the best" spirit is definitely not Gandi's.

Actuallly, our support team asked me to deliver this information because they are the ones dealing with the clients who unfortunately do not belong to the majority now owner of a .eu domain name. And believe me, we do understand how frustrated these clients must be so it seemed important to us to give everyone a global vision of the situation (by the way, we were definitely ready at 11:00 am on the 7th of April, so if the .eu box was still grayed out on your computer, maybe your browser just needed refreshing...)

Gross figures (displayed in real time on our site) :

- 12 089 applications - 9855 successfull registrations, - success rate of 82%.

What you should know is (any similarity with one or another of our competitors is coincidental and beyond my control) :

- we did not open our waiting list before the legally authorised date and time and we never promised that all .eu domain names applications would be validated. We though managed to keep us from having to process huge numbers of applications (not mentionning payment problems for service not rendered).

- we sent the applications progressively, scrupulously following the technical rules and time limits imposed by Eurid. Any registrar going against these Eurid rules would have been blacklisted and forbidden to open the .eu registrations before the 7th of April.

- we have purposedly and systematically rejected all bulk applications from American companies wishing to register their .eu domain names with an European registrar, and as a general rule, we have given priority to quality processing over gross sales volume,

- we make no publicity, a large part of this year profits has been used to developping and training our client-orientated teams (support & dev). We believe in companies made of people devoted to other people... isn't it the way it should be ?

Well, that's all folks, hoping that our new Web site will improve even further your vision of our service, should no be long to come out now.

Brand new logo, brand new site, but same motivation !

Ryan — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 16:06:00 +0200

It is always difficult to remain impartial as to the result of a team project, even more so when the project in question is still in progress.

Probably the best thing to do is to show you a preview of the new site, so you can comment on it, and tell us what you think; in other words, we want to start sharing it with you!

One thing is sure: we have definitely taken the first step towards a change, one that will take place progressively (keep in mind that it is only the first step!), of our new look, new user interface, and automated procedures that will make life easier.

Two words about our logo: it was created by an independent and skillful designer (RMX) whose specifications were to respect our values, our identity, our core business. The new logo had to represent all the keywords that matter most to us : community, user-friendliness, simplicity, transparency, domain names. You will juge whether or not we have successfully done this.

This led to a little guy that is opening out his arms, whose head is both a dot (.org, .net...) and the “third eye”, whose body is the “G” in Gandi, and that resembles a tribal sign, all the while remaining a very simple design that, when accompanied by two others, creates a community (as in this blog).

In addition to this logo (which we love), and a beautiful website that is even easier to use, we have developed many more things (including assisting other innovative and alternative projects), new services, and/or options that we can't wait to show you.

Gandi is gently maturing. And its adoption (by your servants) is going really quite well, all the more so since your trust in us grows each day (I will go into that in greater detail in a bit). Thanks then for being there for us, and to having made this possible! In exchange, we will continue to listen to you, and moreover, to answer. :D

Stop by then in the coming weeks and check out Gandi's new products and services!

PS : Oh yeah, I nearly forgot to present the site (the teasers continue!!):

http://www.lebardegandi.net/public/flash/GandiV2_EN.htm