Newsletter April 2016

SUMMARY: AT A GLANCE
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1. Node Version Manager on Simple Hosting
2. How to spot slamming emails
3. Recently-Delegated TLDs
4. Gandi Events
5. In-depth: What’s a premium domain?
6. Visualization: Things you can do with a domain name
7. TLD release Calendar
8. Promo Roundup

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If April showers bring May flowers, what do April news items bring? I guess we’ll find out next month.

In any case, this month, we have some great news items with which to shower you. To begin with, on the Simple Hosting front: Node Version Manager (NVM) is now available. We also have a quick reminder about how to tell if the email you received about renewing your domain is really from Gandi or if it’s part of a slamming campaign, and a look at the recently-delegated TLDs.

We also went in depth this month on premium domains and created a visualization about ways to use your domain.

And as always, we end this month’s newsletter with a look at the TLD release calendar for the month of April and a look at new and ongoing promotions.

Pascal at Holberton
Gandi CTO Pascal Bouchareine at Holberton School (also pictured: DNS gods)

Node Version Manager on Simple Hosting
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Node Version Manager, better known as nvm, is now available on Simple Hosting Node.js. This means you can run any version of Node.js distributed via nvm. You no longer have to limit yourself to the ones pre-installed on your instance.

All you need to do is add a “.nvmrc” file to your project’s root directory and deploy your code.

One consequence of this update is that you can now run a parse server to build your own Facebook apps. Read about how to set that up in our wiki.

Read our post for full details on NVM | Back to top

How to spot slamming emails
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Over the past month or so, Gandi domain owners have been hit with a wave of slamming emails. These emails pretend to be official notices regarding your domain name registration trying to get you to provide your banking information to a third party.

If you ever get an email like this, remember:

Check the sender email address. Gandi reminders come from the address support-renew@gandi.net.
Check the recipient address. If you have our anti-spam service activated, your real address will not be available to spammers. Gandi will only contact you at your real address. An email sent to an email address @contact.gandi.net, then, should be suspicious.
Check the Messages tab and the Domains page in your Gandi account. If your domain is expired, you’ll see it on your Domains page. If we emailed you, you’ll see it in your Messages tab.
Turn on anti-spam in your account management. If your account doesn’t have this feature activated, it’s harder to tell if an email is legitimate.

Find out more about detecting these | Back to top

Recently-Delegated TLDs
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A few of the notable strings added to the root this month (that is, newly-added TLDs) provide a glimpse into some of the factors that ICANN considers when it decides to approve or not approve new gTLD applications. In particular, they shed some light on Community TLDs, Community Objections, and Public Interest Commitments.

Which strings were delegated and what they reveal | Back to top

Gandi Events
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This past month, our CTO and VP Pascal visited Holberton School a couple of times and we hosted a UX Speed Dating event at our San Francisco office. Coming up this month, we’ll be hosting another UX Speed Dating event on April 20.

The Root Zone. w/ Dr. Paul Mockapetris, April 12, 2016

And on April 12 we’ll be kicking off our new series about DNS The Root Zone. with CloudFlare at 6:00 pm PDT.

Read all event details | Back to top

In-depth: What’s a premium domain?
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What's a Premium Domain

“This domain name is categorized as ‘Premium’ at the registry.”

Maybe you’ve seen something like this message before at Gandi or another registrar. If you have, you may also have wondered what makes these domains special and why they cost extra.

This month we went in-depth on this topic.

See what we found out about Premium domains | Back to top

Visualization: Things you can do with a domain name
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We are continuing our data visualization series this month with a look at a few of the most common and best uses for domain names.

Websites, email, forwading, and money-making: all the things you can do with a domain name