The Voice of LogicBoxes – Vol. 2

Hello folks!

Here’s the second volume of the Voice of LogicBoxes – our bi-annual newsletter on OrderBox updates and other changes that affect your Registrar business. This volume covers the latter half of 2011.

SYSTEM UPDATES

• We’ve added 2 new domain extensions to the system – .XXX, .AU
• The look and feel of the Registrar, Reseller and Customer control panels are in the process of being completely re-designed. As a precursor to this, we’ve already made changes to the CSS to give the header, menu and the widgets a modern and cleaner look
• As part of our ongoing exercise to revamp OrderBox, we’ve clubbed all branding-related tasks for Registrars under one roof with the introduction of “Branding Settings”. Older, text-heavy pages have been given a cleaner, crisper and lighter look
• We’ve also initiated a refactoring exercise for our Bulk Tools where we started with the most heavily-used Bulk Renewals and Registrations. Under this, we refactored the backend code as well as enhanced front-end flows of the Bulk Renewal process. Based on feedback received from Partners, we are currently working on further enhancements to the Bulk Renewal process where we will be attempting to make the flows more intuitive for Customers too
• As part of our initiative to build out our Hosting product portfolio, we’ve launched Multi-Domain Hosting (MDH) on our Linux platform. With this product, you can now host multiple domains under one cPanel account.
• For managing feedback, we’ve restarted UserVoice. Our Product Managers are actively interacting with the Registrar Community to prioritise on features and upgrades that need to be added to the system

OTHER ACTIVITIES

• We conducted two webinars in association with Verisign folks:
  1. A detailed walkthrough of the “Verisign Customer Center”
  2. “Verisign New Unit Marketing Promo” that gave Registrars detailed information on upcoming promotions in 2012

• We also conducted a webinar in conjunction with ICM Registry – the .XXX registry to spread awareness about the new .XXX domain name
• We also attended hugely popular conferences like HostingCon, Parallels APAC and the ICANN meet at Senegal. We’ll most probably be attending these events again, so if you want to meet us at these events in 2012, let us know

If you have any feedback or would like to hear more about the content of this edition, do let us know!

Pic Courtesy SparkeyDavis

Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief – Dec’11

The latest Domain Name Industry Brief by Verisign is out. Here’s a list of key highlights from the report:

Overview

• Q3’2011 closed with nearly 220 Million domain registrations across all TLDs
• This is an increase of 4.9 Million domains (2.3%) over the second quarter
• The ccTLD base grew to 86.9 million domain names, a 2.7% increase quarter over quarter and a 9.8% increase year over year in the base

Top 10 TLDs

• The 6 largest TLDs in terms of base size are .COM, .DE, .NET, .UK, .ORG and .INFO
• .TK is a surprise entry in 7th postion; primarily because .tk domains are available for free
• .NL, .RU and .EU are the last 3 TLDs (in order) that make it to the Top 10 TLD list
• Notably, .CN has slipped out of the Top 10 TLD list

Total Domain Name Registrations

You can view the entire Verisign Report here.

Pic Courtesy Verisign DNIB Report

New Branding Interfaces on OrderBox

We’ve revamped the ‘Branding Settings’ interfaces on the Registrar and Reseller Control Panels.

Earlier text-heavy pages have been given a cleaner, crisper and lighter look. With this new design, we’ve clubbed all branding-related tasks under one central section. Further sub-sections can be easily accessed by a navigation bar on the left.

We have clubbed these existing branding-related sections into one global space:

• SuperSite and PartnerSite Branding
• Control Panel Branding
• Control Panel – Shopping Cart Integration Settings
• Name Server Branding
• URL Branding

Ed’s note: Yes, OrderBox is very customizable

Our main focus has been on simplifying the branding tasks by:

• Providing visually descriptive screenshots/icons to explain branding functions
• Revamping architecture of pages for Registrars and Resellers so that they can easily navigate to all branding tasks
• Simplifying and organizing functions into short easy steps
• Creating no-frills interfaces, with only necessary information to perform tasks
• Providing descriptive help information for better guidance

This is now live in OrderBox!