The 4th Emergency Service

Posted on by March 4, 2014

…with apologies to the RAC, or was it the AA?

We mentioned in our last blog entry that sometimes we don’t look after all of a client’s online operations – it might be that we manage their email but they look after their own website, or we provide their web hosting but they deal with their own email; the permutations are endless and are usually the legacy of a piecemeal engagement with the internet, which often means that ‘someone in the office’ was given responsibility for this area, often a ‘someone’ who didn’t have much idea what was involved.

We had to deal with the fall-out from this for a client the other day. We host the email services of a specialist magazine, but they used another hosting company to host the website via a web designer (a nice clunky set-up just ripe for problems). One aspect of their in-house management was another third party who held the domain and managed the DNS information. DNS is one of the vital links in the chain of making sure that your online world stays on online.

They had decided to move to us for website hosting and asked us to help in transfering from the old host and solve their dependence on its proprietary scripts and applications. Over the course of a few days we determined what the website required and got some forms and scripts written to allow it to work and whilst at it, made it a little easier to get at the data and to look after it. After checking the new website, they switched the website via DNS.

One day last week their emails disappeared into thin air which, to be fair, is where many people imagine emails go before they arrive, but the problem was that the emails didn’t arrive. They came to us asking for help, and it was quickly established that they had misunderstood DNS and so it had been set incorrectly. This was a minor detail for us to sort out and the problem was soon resolved, but it worried our client at the time. Their professional image is important to them, but bouncing thousands of emails and losing the website wasn’t doing much for it.

It wasn’t the first time a client had brought us that sort of problem and it won’t be the last, but it is completely avoidable. If you don’t understand all about registries, registrars, zone files, DNS servers, TTLs and hosts then know at least that they are vital and core parts of your internet presence. Check through everything three times or more before you hit that ‘Submit’ button, or take it to the people who do this sort of thing every day and can take a huge load off your shoulders. There are IT ‘specialists’ out there who make a fortune from frightening people and convincing them they can’t do a thing for themselves and must pay a fortune for specialist services. These people are the snake-oil salesmen of today, but it is the case that some elements of setting up and maintaining online services can be very complex and – more importantly – can cause immense problems and loss of business if that maintenance falls short.

OpenSure customers get all this support for free, it’s all part of the pick’n’mix service. If you have any concerns about the maintenance of your online services or if you’re considering outsourcing them, then drop us a line at info@opensure.net and we’ll be very happy to have a chat.

Who owns your domain?

Posted on by March 4, 2014

Blood group, mother’s maiden name, name of first pet…when you register a domain a lot of information is required and in this age of entering email addresses left, right and centre it’s easy to become blase about the significance of the information we supply. After all, any mistakes and confusions can be sorted out, right?

It ain’t necessarily so, for example when registering a .uk domain name. If any of the information is less than 100% accurate it may be possible for someone with their eye on your domain to re-register it for themselves.

It works like this: anyone can report a domain that is incorrectly registered. Nominet (the central controlling registry for .uk domains) then notifies the contact it has, ie the email address in the registration information. If that address is no longer used or monitored or the email got caught in filters or the mailbox was full etc then you won’t see the warnings.

In an ironic twist, many ISPs – to avoid the problems – put themselves as the registrant, but what if you change ISP and forget to update this tiny little detail? No email means no contact. The domain will then be removed after a few weeks. If you discover this in time the domain may be recovered, but if not the reporter of the domain, or indeed anyone, can then buy your working domain, taking it from under your nose – legally. All your search ratings, brand investment and PR is lost and worse, the new owner may well use the domain to sell pseudo pharmacy, sex, get rich quick schemes etc even sending them to your competitor, further detroying your brand. Nightmare scenario.

This domain pinching is exactly what has happened to two clients of ours recently. It’s common for organisations to become our clients long after their online services are up and running, and/or they may ask us to look after just one area of their online portfolio. Unless we take over responsibility for all their domains or they ask us to audit their entire online outfit (which we are very happy to do) mistakes in areas which companies look after for themselves can lie undiscovered until they start to cause problems. Here are two examples of why it is absolutely vital to ensure domain registration information is entered correctly at the outset and kept up to date, or hand this over to a company which knows what it’s doing.

One client had registered a domain for which we hosted the email and website. Their mistake was in not specifying the nature of the organization correctly (charity, limited company etc). One day, their website suddenly disappeared and people complained of bounced messages.

They contacted us to ask what had happened as they worried it was our service; we quickly established what had happened and contacted and negotiated with Nominet on their behalf to attempt to recover the domain before it was formally struck off. Nick of time stuff and considerable worry for the clients, but this one was saved.

We also look after much of the online activity of an organisation with thousands of members, a tremendously busy website and a top-notch industry reputation. However, they have a few small domains that they hadn’t brought to our attention, not vital on a day-to-day basis but still important to them. All of a sudden visitors to that domain were presented with the home page for a retail company.

Our client contacted us straight away and it became apparent that the domain had been anonymuosly reported because the owner and organization information was inaccurately registered. The domain by then had already been legally sold on and it’s now in the hands of lawyers and the subject of a dispute process, potentially costing our client a great deal of money.

At least it wasn’t their main website – how would YOUR business cope if its main site was suddenly the preserve of a rival company or a completely random business and if it couldn’t be reclaimed for you?

If you’re concerned that your domains might be registered with errors in the information, or you’ve lost track of where you are with domains, get in touch with us at info@opensure.net and we can help. If your business rests on your domain name it’s too important to risk.

I thought you sold sweets?

Posted on by March 4, 2014

Yesterday was a first for us with our OpenSure hats on: we sponsored the CanHave Three Counties Centre launch, with an exhibition stand and our Technical Director, Kevin, delivering a seminar on the benefits of open source for business. Our preparation really paid off, but as always there are things we’d do differently next time. Looking forward to next time already as we had a great day, met lots of people and learnt loads.

We had a plum exhibition spot – thanks Martin! – and sprinkled our table with fluffy sheep, sweets, Ubuntu CDs and Bumbles balloons. Bumbles in Leominster helped us out with sweets and a few accessories to promote our pick’n’mix – it’s the place to go for old fashioned sweeties by the quarter, smart chocolates and all sorts of other tempting things. I think we overdid it as several people said they thought we sold sweets! Sweets were definitely the order of the day and we were all swapping and trading like schoolkids.

The day flew along. I’d expected ample time to blog and tweet as we went along but beyond a momentary breather for the odd tweet I didn’t have a free minute. We were really delighted with the level of interest in our stand, to the point where we got to look at just one or two of the others as we were being nabbed all the time. Hugh & Alex of Cartridge World were  a great find, and being opposite Patrick and Kim from C3Tactical was a gift. Incidentally guys we’re gutted we didn’t win the draw for the free day’s shooting, and after all that pick’n’mix too!

(The silly glasses weren’t my idea)

I think everyone was ready to wind down a bit from 7ish but despite being so hungry I was ready to sink my teeth into the table, we had to earn our supper by doing a quiz. Kevin, myself, Hugh, Chrissie Broadhurst from EasySpace and Alison made up ‘FiveStar’ – believe me, it was better than the many Easy…-themed suggestions – and we were awesome, just missing the top spot by half a point, tchuh! Our knowledge of the finer points of Cheltenham rugby club let us down. Food at last after that (I embarrassed Kevin and had offers of multiple plates and helping hands to carry all the food I’d stacked up) and something from the bar, and a last chance to chat to anyone we’d missed.

The evening wound up with a prize draw – we won two tickets to a champagne buffet on the Forest of Dean railway – and a word from Tina of the Noah’s Ark Trust. It’s a very emotional subject, especially at the end of a long day, and some of the statistics Tina gave us were quite shocking – 53 children a day in the UK lose a parent, and 80% of boys excluded from school have suffered a bereavement. Clearly their work is vital and we’re delighted that Noah’s Ark Trust is CanHave’s chosen charity this year. We got home tired but happy but would do it all over again like a shot.