Gandi Bar

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

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!

Wednesday 3 June 2009

Two months after the launch of the .TEL extension (March 24th 2009), the registry Telnic, has announced that over 200,000 .TEL domains have been registered.

By Ryan on Wednesday 3 June 2009, 12:15 - Gandi

It is true that the summer vacation - lounging about, and getting a nice tan - is on its way, though we have chosen to do the opposite! By staying in doors and slapping on the sun cream we will be making our website lighter and brighter!

3 years after the big makeover (Gandi V1 to Gandi V2), we felt that it was time to brighten up our website. So that's what we did!

This version is not yet Gandi V3, it is more of a transitional stage, which has incorporated only subtle changes here and there - lightening up the graphics and making everything easier to read. Let’s call it Gandi V2.5!

As always, we welcome your comments, criticisms, reactions, large random shipments of candy…

Tuesday 2 June 2009

As you probably already know, our platform protects you from hardware failures that might occur on your server.

In the event of a problem on the machine, or if we suspect that a problem might occur (abnormal temperature, corrupted memory, etc.), your “server” will automatically be migrated to another machine. However, if you have an internal problem on your "server" that is not to due to the physical machine, and if it no longer responds, then you will need to take action.

By Ryan on Tuesday 2 June 2009, 12:43 - Gandi

Spring is here! Spirits are lifted and it is time to enjoy fun in the sun, and sharing colorful postcards all over the web! This is why we have launched our second Gandi SiteMaker competition with the theme: Vacation get-aways!

Is there a special place where you dream of spending your vacation more than anywhere else in the world? Do you want to share it with everyone so that they too can have a wonderful time?

Create a website about this dream location using Gandi SiteMaker and you might win a E.P.C Inspiron Mini9 offered by our partner, Dell, as well as a free year's subscription to Gandi SiteMaker Pro.

To participate, you simply need to have an available Free Gandi SiteMaker plan. We will only accept sites made using the free version of Gandi SiteMaker, so that everyone has the same chances of winning. If you would like a quick example of one, here is one that I made in under 2 hours (I am slow), only using elements available in the Free pack, as well as some personal photos.

Your websites will be judged on the following criteria:

General ergonomics, the graphic cohesion of the site, originality, clarity of information, final touches, and finally, the warmth that it gives off! We want you to give us the desire to go there and to dream of a vacation at that spot.

As we enjoy visiting your websites at Gandi, our entire staff will be voting on the websites. For once, it will be us that judge your work...

Ah, there is one more thing! The goal of this type of competition is to make the internet more colorful, and so let your imagination run free! We are not limiting the number of websites allowed and you can even make your website on one page if you want. And as always, we are keeping the competition fun and laid-back. There are no rules, no lawyers, etc. We are just doing this out of pleasure and as among friends; Fewer rules means more fun

The competition has already begun, and it will end on June 30tht. Please send your website address to us at whoisdabest@gandi.net.

As for us, we will be putting on our sunglasses!

The current competitors are:

http://www.marolles-rando.fr/
http://www.thelostislands.com/
http://www.scouteo.fr/
http://egypte.gandi-site.net/
http://palermo.gandi-site.net/

Thursday 28 May 2009

Would you trust a 'for profit' company to represent your best interests? Perhaps. But when your interests diverge, will they represent you or themselves?

Following the overwhelming success of our first article on the domain name industry (1 comment ;-), we naturally thought you were begging for more! I know, I know registrars and registries can be a bit dull, but it is important. Believe me when something goes wrong with your domain name, understanding this can be quite important. So if we look at how and where issues can be dealt with, and who has influence in the industry it sheds a bit more light on the subject.

Thursday 7 May 2009

Many websites start with a single server solution, a box acting as a web server and database server all in one. Simply, easy, cheap. The problem comes when traffic gets too high (a victim of their own success!). Many customers want a bigger box, but the answer is actually changing your architecture from "web server" to "web infrastructure". You can duplicate web servers, use the DNS to load balance them and ramp up your capacity very fast and very far.

Friday 24 April 2009

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.

Wednesday 8 April 2009

We are pleased to release 3 new improvements this week, .DE domains for everyone, launch of .RU and live service status directly from Gandi's homepage:

.DE domains for everyone

We are now able to offer the German extension to everyone! This is done by setting a local German contact (trustee) as one of your domain contacts when you purchase a .DE domain. The local contact (a German lawyer) will automatically become the administrative contact at the registry on your behalf, though you will of course still own the domain name, and have administrative rights through Gandi.

Tuesday 7 April 2009

A pulling back of the domain business curtain to reveal a few shady practices undertaken by unnamed sources…

1) Transfer Out Fee. It is essential to read the small print when signing up to a domain registrar. There are all kinds of pitfalls waiting for those who couldn’t be bothered to go through the terms and conditions with sufficient care and attention. For instance, hidden deep in there might be an agreement for a charge to be made to your account as a ‘transfer out’ fee if you want to switch your domain to a different registrar. What’s worse is this fee might be several times the price of your original registration.[|/post/2008/12/04/Dodgy-domain-practices-the-story-contines#comments|en]

Thursday 2 April 2009

We are pleased to announce the release of a new feature that you've been eagerly anticipating for some time now : the ability to increase the size of your disks!

You will need to perform two steps to do this:

Change the volume of your disk,
Run the necessary update on the file system itself.

This operation is totally automated for servers running under Gandi AI, though it's only possible to do this on data disks for the moment.

By Joe on Thursday 2 April 2009, 15:12 - Gandi

The best way to see if your server is doing well and check that you have optimized its power is to have server statistics!

We finally have some nice graphs that let you see your server's CPU usage, network traffic, and your disk's read-write usage. These graphs will give you precious information on how your server is used, and when various usage peaks or low-points occur, so that you can optimize your services - with our VPS hosting service you can add and remove shares without taking your service off-line and use our 'flex' shares to plan for peaks.

Below is an example of a server that is "active". You can see that the processor is only using on average 16% to 18% of its power (over a 24-hour period), with a peak at 40%. The server is running on 2 shares, and is therefore the hosting is clearly too powerful for its current needs:

Wednesday 25 March 2009

You may remember we recently told you about www.demotix.com, a citizen journalism website and photo agency, which is one of the companies supported by Gandi.

Well they've just won the Guardian newspaper Independent Media Award!! This is a fantastic recognition for demotix who are starting to make inroads to the heavily dominated media industry. More and more of their photos and stories, provided by real people all over the world, are starting to find their way into the traditional press, and this accolade from one of the most respected UK newspapers will do a lot to support this progress.

Well done Demotix!

http://www.demotix.com/news/demotix-wins-media-guardian-award-2009