Gangster Ireland!!!

hmmm... high cost also ensures that many people who cannot afford the 99 are completely excluded from .ie.

On the otherhand, nothing annoys me more than the 'nice people' who just buy up domain names so that they can resell them and make a tidy profit!

There is a middle ground on this. Why not introduce a bit of .ie competition? Why does there have to be just one company? I mean surely anyone who can handle the administration and technology can do the job, especially with a little incentive to do it a bit more efficiently.

The restrictions on who could register a .ie domain until not too long ago were negated if you knew who to talk to. ilovestephengatley.ie being one particular show of their lack of due (claimed) process. (at least I think that was the domain? around 1999...)

In any case, keeping DNS records up to date is fairly trivial, some work is needed to develop an interface whereby customers can update their records. If the IEDR were to have a high setup fee, in order to validate that you are a proper company or whatever, then charge 20 euro a year then that would make sense, but they dont.

The IEDR used to require you to be a business before regestering a domain name. So clubs, (some) charities[1] etc. could not get domains easily. domains for private individuals was right out, and still are unless you are a politician.

Most of this originated from when in the early ninties the IEDR was ran as a service from UCD, from a smallish box in the computer sevices building out the back of the physics building. Well someone had to run .ie! But you can appreciate this would result in high charges and a lot of red tape.

All the IEDR has to do is maintain a fairly standard service. Checking the applicants merits an increased first time registration fee, not the contimuous rip off they currently use. It is also one of the very few registrars who still sell directly to the public, rather than helping resellers to easily and cheaply do it, and just maintain the service themselves.

Cheers,
~Al

[1] I've heard from DR folk that astronomy.ie was not be allowed to be registerd by a company called "Astronomy & Space", only "Astronomy Ireland" could get it, and then as an unincorporated association. I'm NOT intending to start a debate on that! Just to show an example of how tricky it can be to get the ie domain you want even if your company would appear to have a legitimate claim to it.

Al,

funny you should mention AI, because it was actually me who organised the registration of astronomy.ie on AI's behalf many years ago. A that time A&S didnt exist so there really wasnt any issue. I'm pretty sure that if A&S were to go to register it today, that wouldnt be a problem either. However if say, another company with no astronomy connection did try that would be a different matter. A friend of mine who sells electric bikes registered revolution.ie. Even though that was not his company name, the only question asked was that he wasnt going to use the domain name to promote an uprising against the state (revolution).

Hi David,

I noticed your name as the admin on the WHOIS records alright. I remember this conversation from the bar in UCD some years back when the topic of the IEDR came up, so my memory is a little hazy At the time of the discussion the IEDR were fairly strict (mostly...) about domains matching the company name. A conversation very similar to this one unfortunately.

Cheers,
~Al

Your right Al. Though it was a long time ago, I seem to remember having to supply a whole pile of stuff to prove that I was acting on behalf of Astronomy Ireland. Letter heads and stuff signed by the secretary and all manner of formality.

Can you recommend using (or avoiding) a hosting service? I'd prefer to use an Irish one. Hosting 365 seem to offer good packages.

www.hosting365.ie/hosting_specials.php

The site I am developing is for my Primary School. What do you recommend for site development? I have use a mixture of Claris Homepage on a Macintosh and HTML (limited knowledge) before and it worked well. I plan to develop this new site using PC. Do you recommend Frontpage?

Thanks

Liam

Liam

Sorry about the delay in replying, I was on holidays.

Why don't you contact the Agora project in the Ardkeen Library as they will give you hosting FREE and without ADS.

OK its fairly basic but free and you are listed in the local directory where your school is located....the Dunmore Road!

If you want contact me and I'll give you details.


Your Web address will be www.ardkeen.ie/whateveryouwant

Conor