Domain Registrars

Updated 2009-11-25
I am still with Domainsatcost.ca but Registryfly.com had to stop registering domains. They were doing something that was not allowed but never affected me. Moved the COM sites to Domainsatcost.ca.

Published 2002-11-12
Picking a good Domain Registrar(DR) is more important than you might think. I mean what do they do? They register your domain name right? That used to be the case but things have changed in the past few years.

What you are about to read is my personal experiences with 3 different DR’s. Specifically www.DomainsatCost.ca, www.registryfly.com, andwww.networksolutions.com (now owned by Verisign).

DomainsAtCost.ca
After 2 years of using DomainsAtCost.ca(not .com) I would definitely rate this the best DR out there for .CA domains. Their price can’t be beat but there is much more. Their service is excellent. The website is fast and easy to navigate(It could bet even faster and more efficient with a few minor performance tweaks). The site is great for managing multiple domain names at once. They make the process as painless as possible. In addition they provide what I consider an invaluable FREE redirect service that can redirect to a folder in a website (critical for multiple domains and only one website). They also provide the best search engine for common Domain Names I have found. It includes a “similar” name list on each search. Just the search engine is worth checking out their site. I highly recommend them. The only negative comments I can say is that their price on US domain names is a higher than their US competition($14.95) and for some reason more than DomainsAtCost.com (but still a good price) and email response on weekends could be improved(maybe it has, rarely need email). Compared to other Canadian DR’s DomainsAtCost.ca has no competition.

Registerfly.com
This company just keeps getting better and offering more services. I first used their service 2 years ago. They are great for general use except for .CA domains. Register with them and you may not need any other service providers. They provide many FREE services at a very cheap price but again it is service that is important. Everything works through the website and is fast and fairly easy to navigate. The problem with navigation is they have so many options(not a bad thing). For $8.99us per year you can have your domain registered, have email, and a very simple website. Now that is tough to beat. They have lot’s of other FREE options with registration. They do not offer .CA domain registration unfortunately. I prefer DomainsAtCost.ca but this company is a close second. If I needed more of their free services I think they would be #1… tough call.

NetworkSolutions.com
You knew there was going to be an exception…
Originally I started with NetworkSolutions(NS) back in 1995 when I registered my first domain. They were the only DR available. It was simple to register because my web service provider did it for me. The cost… $70 per year, services, absolutely none. You would think paying such a premium would get you top service… HA!!! Here is my 7 year nightmare… There was no problem until I changed email addresses several years after registering. That is when I actually had to get involved… Since I no longer had my old email ID(dropped acount 6+ months before) it was virtually impossible to communicate with NS to renew my domain. At that time they did not accept anything unless it was from email. Go to their website and forms were very complex and almost impossible to find the right form. Navigation was one of the worst I have seen. It took 6 months to finally get my email changed with more back-and-forth than I care to remember. After that I moved… another nightmare trying to get my information changed… another 4 months… Their price has always been among the highest (until recently they were $30 per year…now $15.00/year-if you register for 2 years). A year ago I finally got fed up and went to change DR’s before I had to renew. After 2 months of messing around the domain was expiring and I had to renew with NS. This year I decided to get a jump on transferring. I started on September 27th(renewal is April 2003) … Good thing… I am still screwing around with the new “Verisign” to get this accomplished. I have requested it be transferred 3 times now and it still hasn’t happened. Each time the whole process works except the confirmation email from NS(now Verisign)… I even get email stating the request was rejected because I did not confirm the request. Each time the response I got when I contacted Verisign was “try again”… On the 3rd attempt I wasn’t going to wait around for it to be rejected… Requested transfer yesterday everything proceeding like other times… no response from NS by 9am today… I called them and someone(David) actually looked into it… “for some reason” they can’t see where they are sending the confirmation message. They should be able to… they just can’t… appears to be sending it to a blank email address?? Good someone actually looked at this AFTER my 3rd attempt. When I called Verisign I did note that it was quick to reach someone and David was very polite and responded to my issues as best he could. I was informed the account would be moved within 2 days. If this doesn’t get done you know I am not going to be very happy and this article will be updated for your reference. Just a thought for you…. 100 domains here= $7,000/year… 100 domains registerfly.com = $899/year
Hopefully Verisign can salvage the client base from NS. It will be a difficult challenge given the abuse NS’s customers have had to endure. Verisign will have to adjust very quickly and add a lot of options and I’m not sure they are prepared for the scope. Verisign is a big company and this integrates well with their other services to provide complete end-to-end solutions. Please note that Verisign has inherited a mess, they did not create it!

There are many good DR’s for US domains now, not so many for .CA domains. You no longer have to accept poor service and high costs. Shop around, the difference can be extreme. I have seen registration charges as high as $100 recently.

So like I said… 
Picking a good Domain Registrar is more important than you might think

At time of publishing the only relationship I have with any of these companies is as a customer. The comments here are my personal experiences with 3 companies, you may have a totally different relationship with any or all of them. Due to experiences with NetworkSolutions I spent countless hours reviewing many DR’s before deciding. I think my choices have worked out well. There are DR’s that are a few dollars cheaper but guaranteed good service is worth more than $2 per year.

Like always, these are my opinions…. I could be wrong.

Which Coding Language to Use?

Updated 2009-11-25
My how things have changed. Java appears to be going the way of OS/2, Microsoft is now .NET instead of ASP, and many unix servers are using PHP(even some Windows servers). XHTML and XML are both extensively used. Netscape is gone and replaced with Firefox. Smart phones have finally replaced WAP. DIV and SPAN tags are the predominate tags now. Many more servers are now Windows based instead of Unix. .NET is dominant in large business sites. Browsers are all over the place and then there are smart phones. I expect everything to change to video/3D over next 10 years so don’t spend too much time on this stuff  At this time I prefer the following:

• .NET for server. Can be C#, VB, PHP, Python or other language but .NET handles various browser issues(mostly).
• CSS – now the standard. Actually standards are recommending all layout should be in CSS format and not included in HTML tags. 
• JavaScript – The standard for years.
• Ajax or similar – dynamic communication as well as saving bandwidth.User gets virtually instant responses.
• MySQL – for databases. Open source.
• Flash – for dynamic graphics sections.
• Look into video and 3D tools – I see most sites going to interactive video/3D instead of text.

Updated 2001-02-15
Well, if you consider that AOL is a version of Internet Explorer(IE) then IE version 4+ now controls 85%+ of the browser market. Microsoft owns 98% of the operating systems. With this combination it should make your decisions easier. Now the potential to use VBScript, ActiveX etc. is feasible on the Internet. Is XHTML or XML going to win? Not sure, probably neither. Each is the “new” language that will allow everyone to communicate together… heard that before??? CSS is here to stay. It will be improved but it is a base for layouts to come. WAP is not going away for awhile… bandwidth may change that so I would not invest too heavily but it is necessary for several sites(like stock brokers, banks…) right now. You can trash all the tables and start using DIV and Span tags. Java is actually gaining ground since more powerful computers and faster bandwidth are available. Microsoft owning everything defeats the one real benefit of Java though. There is always going to be the next language that will solve everything for us… we buy it then figure out it can’t do ???? that the other product could. These of course will be solved in the next version…;-).
A big step is Netscape’s support of standards. Now if we could get Microsoft to do the same and drop that *&*%$# document.all method we could really get grooving. It might surprise many of you to know that Netscape6 is a better standards based browser than Explorer5.5. Explorer is much more forgiving for developers where Netscape is strict.

Published 1997-09-25
For Intranet(because of it’s controlled concept) I would use Microsoft^® supported languages exclusively. These would include DHTML, CSS, Jscript with server code mostly in ASP files. Limited use of VBscript, ActiveX and JAVA. This of course won’t work if you are an OS/2 shop but will work for MAC and some Unix operating systems.

For Internet I prefer to recommend more platform independent languages at this time. Unfortunately many languages are needed to truly develop a site. Unless you use at least some of the capabilities specific to the browser you limit your potential gains.
DHTML is now a must.
JavaScript(Jscript) is best for scripting simply because both browsers support it(sort of).
Pure JAVA is best for advanced requirements but is limiting and slow(this is improving very quickly).
CGI is still my choice for server side code but only because most servers are still Unix. If you can, I recommend using other languages(VB,C++,REXX, whatever).
Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) for those with requirements for specific positioning of elements. Or at least extensive use of small tables(large ones are slow to load).
All above can support both Netscape^® and Microsoft^® browsers if designed correctly.
After all that is said, I have found you need ALL languages above to provide the client with the best solution. More importantly, how(or if) they work on different browsers.

Best Seldom Wins

Published 1999-07-08
In the computer industry it is very rare that the best product/company wins. Usually what wins is a combination of marketing and price. This also applies to most other areas.

Examples:

• Xerox actually made the first PC as we know it. They also created Ethernet and Object Oriented technology. Management didn’t know what to do with them. Steve Jobbs came in, stole the PC, and presto we have Macintosh. One of their staff quit and took Ethernet to market.
• In early 80’s Macintosh makes the best PC. IBM finally sees the potential, takes garbage parts from current PC manufacturers and sticks their logo on it. Suddenly all current PC manufacturers are “IBM Clones” except Macintosh. IBM compatible system dominate the market even with the crappy command line interface. IBM PC’s with their cheap parts are now perceived as superior to other PC’s even though other PC’s have vastly superior product.
• Billy gets someone to hack CMS and pays them $50,000 for what is called QDos. Then sells it to IBM for $80,000 while still keeping the rights to use QDos. IBM drops the Q. Billy becomes Microsoft.
• Macintosh had the best user interface(by far). Billy came with Windows(crap). Suddenly Windows was on everyone’s system. IBM came with OS/2. Technically superior system to Mac and Windows. Never got market share. Microsoft came with Windows95 and NT. Still not as good as OS/2 but guess who won?
• STK made an awesome hard disk system for mainframes but could not market it until IBM replicated most of the features.
• Amdahl made some of the best CPU’s in the mainframe but had difficulty marketing because IBM had total control of the market. Same thing with AMD and Intel in PC world. To bad, I really think they had great systems.

There are many more examples but I think you get the idea.
Almost always better products were ousted by lesser products with better marketing.
So what wins…..best product or best marketing?

PC-NC-Mac Which is best?

Updated 2009-11-24 originally published 1997-09-25
Well many people now have higher than 1.5mbs connections and guess what… Network Computers(NC) are getting attention again. With the explosion of the Internet NC’s are becoming very viable. With Google going after Microsoft this could get very interesting. NC’s could come into favor much quicker with Google’s assistance. Many applications are already either 100% web based or have extensive interfacing with the web. A conversion of 90% of users could happen within 10 years due to the much cheaper systems and advantages of computing anywhere.

As for PC-MAC comparison… looks like many people are going to MAC’s to avoid so many viruses and attacks. Microsoft is still dominant but has lost share to Mac. These two have bigger issues than each other… Smart phones have become the choice of younger surfers. These new devices are chewing up both PC & MAC market share.

Updated 1997-11-01
Which is best? A delicate question. Depending on requirements.
NC’s(Network Computers) taken as a concept should be adopted by business wherever possible. All applications should reside on central servers. As a physical computing unit NC’s have a limited focus right now. They are great for appliances like the WebTV, specific business functions that do not require intense data processing(like data entry), and others. The big advantage is in the concept not the physical unit. The concept will reduce cost of ownership dramatically for the business if applied correctly.
PC’s(including MAC) are going to be around for a long time. Personally I don’t have confidence in bandwidth to download my operating system every time I start the computer. PC’s also allow intensive applications like CorelDraw to run without problems. Business has already tried to implement the NC concept with only applications but with limited bandwidth most have found it unacceptable. I expect eventually when everyone has 1.5mbps connections and the Internet supports the required speed NC’s will become more of a reality. If you only want to surf the Web an NC is the way to go(cheap). Otherwise I would stick to the PC.

For PC Vs MAC, previous to Windows 95 I ran the following rule….PC’s are for those that want to know about computers, Mac’s are for those that don’t. That said, Windows 95 interface has really changed this. Both are now easy to use and each has it’s advantages. Apple’s MAC has very good quality hardware components(much better than most PC’s). MAC unfortunately has limited, expensive software.