Web Development Blog » dns

.tel domain launch, the next mobile story

Olaf — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:45:21 +0000

Since a few days domain names with the .tel TLD are available for registration. After a sunrise and landrush period it’s possible to register your personal .tel ID for less than $20.

Why buying a .tel domain?

A .tel domain is not like other domain names. These domain names are hosted by “special” .tel hosting providers and a .tel website looks totally different. Since this domain is released for mobile devices, it’s not possible to create your own custom website. What you get is a kind of personal profile page where it’s possible to add personal (contact) information, links and custom text.

Next to this information it’s possible to show “private” information which is accessible only by “friends”, yes there is also a soialc idea behind the .tel domain. People can send messages too each other and become Friends. All communications are done though the .tel control panel or the interface from telfriends.tel website (you need to join that site too). The idea is that people are able to access your personal site on a mobile phone with the ability to choose the way how to contact you (Phone call, e-mail, SMS, MMS, Skype, etc.)

How does it work?

If you register a .tel domain the name server point to the .tel hosting platform from your registration provider or his partner. I guess a domain transfer is not that easy because all data on your .tel website is stored inside the DNS. To enter your data you have access the control panel provided by the .tel hosting provider.

It looks like that a lot of domain names are already registered and there is also a lot of endorsement about the .tel domain. While peope using more and more mobile devices to access the Internet, has this way of communication maybe a market. Telfriends is working now but need really more functions for socialmedia sites like MySpace, facebook Linkedin etc. I’m sure if more people will register a .tel domain the whole idea has a future.

Register your personal .tel domain

Several ICAN credited registrars offer the .tel domain for registration (Dynadot, Name…). Check also the cheap offer by dotster.com below (please send us a comment if the offer is expired)

Dotster: Limited time only $11.95
Similar Posts:

AdSense for Domains, just another Domain Parking Service?

Olaf — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:44:17 +0000

Actually “Adsense for domains” is just like most of the other domain parking services. So why should we park our unused domain names with Google?

For a long time I never used any domain parking services because I didn’t believed in that product. I checked the first time “Revenue Parking” provided by my domain registration provider Dynadot, after several month I was not very satisfied with that product. Another point to not use that kind of service was that you need host a domain name with the same provider if you want to their domain parking service.

Several weeks ago I read on the Adsense blog about this new service and forget it already because the “Adsense for domains” was not yet available in my account. By accident I noticed the new link on my Adsense setup page and started to plat a little with this new product.

Add domain names and configuration

Adding domain names is quite simple just add your name together with the language and in the next step you get the information for the DNS settings. As with most other parking services you don’t need to change the name server entries. You need to enter at least 4 A-records and one CNAME for the “www” sub-domain. The CNAME holds also your Adsense Publisher ID which should be used for the validation that a domain belongs to your Adsense account. For the DNS configuration you will find help files with information how to change the DNS with the bigger domain name provider. I created one account on my own server and add other domain names as domain pointer. This way I’m able to copy past the information directly into “named” data base files.

Validation process and add styles

After you add the domain to your account and the DNS configuration is done it needs a few hours until the validation is done. At the moment you need to check the your account by yourself and if needed to re-validate there is an option too. After validation you’re able to add channels to your parked domain name: “I suggest to do that other wise you didn’t know which domain performs very well and which not”. Tray also to enter some keywords to your domain name and maybe you like to change the style from your parking page. Right parking pages are not very “stylish”, but maybe some custom colors will let the visitor generate more page views.

Reports and earnings

“Adsense for domains” is (great) CPM based advertising. It look to me as for regular ads, that some domain names perform better some than another. Just like with content related ads Google will show ads with higher and lower revenue. The reports are the same as for the other ads (content, search…) and doesn’t need any explanation. At the moment I can’t see if impressions from the landing page will earn more or less than impressions from other result pages. There is no information about the how many clicks are generated.

Rules for publishers

There are some new rules for the “domain park” publisher, since the earnings are CPM based it’s not allowed to redirect traffic to that page, advertising for parked domain isn’t allowed…

I use the Adsense product for names which are not used anymore and still have some traffic. I noticed that some domain perform much better than earlier with content ads.

What is your experience with “Adsense for domains”?

Similar Posts:

How-to setup the DNS and name server for a DirectAdmin web server

Olaf — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:44:47 +0000

You have enough of shared hosting and/or the costs for bandwidth are too high? OK, the next step is your own dedicated server, but with a limited budget it’s hard to find a good and cheap managed server.

For all beginning server administrator is this guide about how-to setup the DNS for a server with a DirectAdmin control panel.

Why DirectAdmin (DA)?
I like this control panel at most, it’s fast, frequently updated and there are updates also for the latest PHP and MySQL version. I’m sure there are much more pros and of course there are more powerful control panel systems.

If you buy an unmanaged dedicated server, the operating system and DirectAdmin should be installed. If not, you need to do it by yourself (check the DA website for further information). I guess this is a hard job for a beginner, if you need to start from the beginning try to use Ubuntu, this Linux distribution works great with DirectAdmin.

First of all you need to login to your DirectAdmin control panel, click “IP management” and enter the two IP addresses (we use the IP addresses 12.34.56.78 and 12.34.56.79 for our example) you got from your hosting provider (the first server IP address should be already in the list)

Next from the admin panel, switch to the “User level” and click on “DNS Management”. Enter here the DNS records you need for your domain name / host. Don’t forget you need to enter also the two name server entries (there is a trailing dot (.) behind the value).

To setup the DNS and name servers for your server you need use the domain name you have used in the local DNS setup before. Configure the domain with your “global” DNS (domain) provider as follow (these are the two IP addresses you have configured within DirectAdmin):

ns1.domain.com -> 12.34.56.78 ns2.domain.com -> 12.34.56.79

These name server entries need some time to populate to the internet (up to 24-48 hours).

In the meantime we need to add some more setting to the web server. Login to DirectAdmin and click “Administrator Settings”. Enter a server name within the field “Server’s Hostname”, I used serv01.domain.com. Enter the name server entries you have used before for the fields NS1 and NS2 and leave the DA control panel.

Now connect to your server via SSH (use Putty). Login as root (sudo) and enter:
nano /etc/hosts

With this command you enter the file “hosts” with the text editor Nano some distro’s may not include Nano in which case you may wish to use Pico or the adventurous Vi, add this row (check the Linux MAN pages how to insert text with teh editor Vi):

12.34.56.78 srv01.domain.com srv01

And save the file via ctrl+x (confirm to save the file) or :wq if you edit the file with Vi.

That’s all, you’re done!

I know there are much more distributions and also other cool control panel systems and I hope this guide will help you even if your system is different.

Similar Posts: