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directNIC Guides: directNIC.com Services

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Table of Contents

  1. Registration Services
    1. Domain Registration
  2. Hosting Services
    1. Free Hosting
    2. Bannerless Hosting
    3. Premium Hosting
    4. Virtual Domains (Subdomains)
    5. URL Redirection
    6. Free For Sale Page
  3. Domain Transfer
  4. Email Forwarding
  5. POP3 Email
  6. Webmail
  7. Other Services
    1. directDNS
    2. Statistics Tracking
    3. Merchant Account
    4. Free Parking
    5. SSL Certificate
    6. Nameserver Registration
    7. SiteCreator

Registration Services

Domain Registration

Currently, directNIC has the registrations for .com, .org, .net, .biz, .info, .name, .us, .cn, .tv, .eu, .cc, and .ws TLDs.

Here are the steps to register a domain.

  1. After logging into your directNIC account, click on "Domain Registrations" under the "Basic Options" section, and start to Search for your desired domain name(s) using either the basic or advanced search feature.

  2. When an available domain is found, click on that domain to add it to your shopping cart. When you finish finding available domains, click on the "Check Out" link.

  3. Examine the list of domains in your shopping cart, selecting the number of years for the domain registration. Then, click on "Continue Purchase."

  4. Choose the appropriate contacts and nameservers for the domains. You can use directNIC default nameservers if you want to use our hosting services. Then click on "Continue Purchase."

  5. Verify your purchase information, double check your domain name spelling, enter your credit card information (or use your directNIC Dollars) and click on "Purchase." (Note: only click purchase ONCE; the process can take several minutes)

Note:

1. Customers of directNIC have the ability to register unlimited domains that are not longer than 63 characters (excluding the extension after the dot sign) and that has not already been registered by another entity.

However, if the domain name is found to violate the intellectual property rights of another entity (trade name for example), then the owner of the domain may be liable for damages or be subject to a dispute over the ownership of the domain name.

Disputes over domain names are handled according to the ICANN Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy which can be found at http://www.directnic.com/legal/udrp.php.

2. The Organization contact you choose for the domain will be displayed in WHOIS as the registrant of the domain. During the registration period, the registrant is the owner of the domain. directNIC is your registrar. You have the total control of your domain name and you can make modifications, transfers, or sell the domain name at any time during your registration.

Please be aware that the administrative contact of the domain has the administrative control of the domain. In addition, the owner of the account where the domain is located also has power to manage the domain. This happens when you ask someone else to register the domain for you. You are listed as the owner of the domain but the reseller places the domain in his/her account instead of your own account.

There is only one exception:　Ｆor .EU domains, the organizational contact (the registrant) of the domain has the administrative control of the domain.

After the domain expires, you will be given 30 days grace period to renew the domain. If you do not renew the domain within the 30 days, you might lose the ownership of the domain.

3. For .com, .net, .org and .tv domains, you do not have to register a domain name for two years as required with some other registrars. When you initially register a domain name with directNIC, you can register it for any amount of time from one year to five years. The minimum time for registering these domain extensions with directNIC is one year. Nevertheless, on January 15, 2000, ICANN announced that they would honor domain registrations up to ten years.

For .name domains, the minimum is two years.

Hosting Services

Free Hosting

If you have registered a domain with directNIC, you can host your domain site at directNIC for free, in exchange for directNIC service ad banners.

The directNIC Free Hosting package offers 20 megabytes of Web space, with unlimited subdomains and unlimited data transfers. We also offer free email forwarding, parking and site redirection. You can enroll in this service using any or all of your directNIC domain names. You can also set up unlimited virtual hosts with each domain name.

To set up your site for free hosting:

  1. Log into your directNIC account at https://secure.directNIC.com/myaccount/.
  2. Click on the "Domain Manager" link.
  3. Click on the "Change Hosting Information" icon to the right of the domain that you wish to modify.
  4. Click on the "Change Hosting Type" link and choose "Free web site."
  5. Click on the "Change Hosting Type" button at the bottom of the page.
Bannerless Hosting

Bannerless hosting is similar to directNIC's free hosting, but if you do not want directNIC banners on your site, you can pay US$15 a year to have the ad banners taken off your site. Under the bannerless hosting option, a directNIC customer can set up one virtual domain at a time for bannerless hosting. The cost will be US$15 for one year or 2 gigabytes of data transfer, whichever comes first. When this option is chosen, you will be able to upload files up to 5 megabytes in size, as well as a broader variety of file types, such as multimedia. The bannerless hosting option, however, does not include CGI, PHP, Front Page extensions, ASP, ColdFusion, MP3 streaming or MySQL support. The cost for additional space is US$6.00 (or 6 directNIC Dollars) per additional gigabyte of data transfer.

To use directNIC's bannerless hosting, you must first log into your account at directNIC.com.

  1. Once inside your account, select the "Domain Manager" tab.
  2. Find the domain you wish to switch to set up bannerless and select the "Change Hosting Information" (or the house icon) button under the options section.
  3. Click on the "Change Hosting Type" link.
  4. Select "Bannerless hosting" inside the hosting section and click "Change Hosting Type" button.
  5. You then will be prompted to make your US$15 payment for this feature.

Once you have set this feature, it takes about 15 minutes for the server to update this information and reset your domain as bannerless.

Note: If you at anytime turn off your bannerless feature before the 1 year or 2 gigabytes of data transfer are up, you will have to pay again for this feature if you wish to re-activate it.

Premium Hosting

Based on the plan you select, Premium Hosting gives you up to 6000MB of Disk space and 1000GB of transfer per month for 1, 3, or 12 month periods.

It also includes: POP3 Email Accounts Email Forwarding rules Mailing Lists MySQL databases Email Auto-Responders Email Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus PHP (with GD lib and most standard PHP modules) Perl CGI

For more information, visit:https://secure.directnic.com/myaccount/paidhosting/?action=signup

Virtual Domains (Subdomains)

A virtual domain is an extension of your domain name. Once you have purchased "yourname.com," you can create branches of this name, such as "anything.yourname.com." These are called virtual domains. The advantages of creating a virtual domain are that you can receive 20 MB of space on our server per virtual domain, and it is much easier to direct people to various parts of your domain without hassling with long URLs and file extensions. To create a virtual domain, you must have your domain in "Hosting" status. Once that is complete follow these instructions:

  1. Log into your directNIC account at https://secure.directNIC.com/myaccount.
  2. Click on the "Domain Manager" link.
  3. Click on the "Change Hosting Information" icon to the right of the domain you wish to create a virtual host.
  4. Click on the "Add New Virtualhost" link.
  5. Enter the virtual domain you would like to create and then click the "Add Virtual Host" button.
URL Redirection

You can point your domain to an already existing website. You can choose to redirect with or without frames. With frames, your domain name will remain in the address bar, while without frames, the web address you are redirecting to will show up in the user's address bar.

To redirect a domain name to an existing website follow these instructions:

  1. Log into your account and click on the "Domain Manager" link.
  2. Click on the "Change Hosting Information" icon next to the domain you wish to modify and then click on the "Change Hosting Type" button.
  3. Click on the button next to the "Redirect" option. You can choose either "Redirect" or "Redirect with no frame."
  4. Click on the "Change Hosting Type" button.

The following page will allow you to enter the URL to which you wish to redirect your domain. Make sure that you click the "Redirect" button to submit the change. It may take up to 48 hours for the changes to propagate, if your domain has not been using directNIC nameservers.

Free For Sale Page

You can put up a for sale page for your domain so that anyone who goes to your URL will see that the domain is for sale and have an email address to contact you. To mark your domain for sale:

  1. Click on the "Change Hosting Information" icon to the right of the domain you want to park under the "Options" heading.
  2. Click the "Change Hosting Type" link and select the radial button next to "For Sale."
  3. Then, click the "Change Hosting Type" button.

Domain Transfer

You can transfer domains from another registrar to directNIC. To transfer your domain names follow these instructions:

  1. Log into your account at http://directnic.com/myaccount.
  2. Click on "Domain Transfers" link under the "Basic Options" section. (The direct URL is https://secure.directnic.com/myaccount/register/transfers.php）
  3. Enter in the names of the domains you would like to transfer to directNIC. You can enter up to 50 at a time.
  4. Choose a contact you would like to use. If you do not have the contact set up yet, you need to add a new contact. Please refer to the question "how do I add a new contact in my account." Click on the "Submit Transfer List" button.
  5. Verify that all of your information is correct and click on the "Purchase Transfer Request" button.
  6. Enter your payment information and click on the "Purchase Domains" button. The US$15 charge, for one year's registration, will be tacked on to the amount of time you have left with the other registrar.

Note: ALL domain extensions now require you to obtain the authinfo code from your current registrar and then enter it in the proper field when you approve the transfer as the administrative contact. We currently do not process incoming transfers of .tv, .ws and .cn domains.

Your hosting information will remain as the same during or after the transfers. Your website will not be affected during the transfer as long as your hosting company continues to host your site after the transfer.

If you would like to change your hosting status and let directNIC host your site, you will need to set the nameserver to directNIC default in your account after the domain is transferred.

Email Forwarding

To forward email from your domain name to an existing email address, first select one of the hosting options, such as the redirect, parking, directDNS or website hosting, and then follow these instructions:

  1. Log into your account at https://secure.directNIC.com/myaccount
  2. Click on the "Domain Manager" button on the second navigation bar.
  3. You will see your domains with several icons under "Options" at the right end of the row. Click the envelope icon.
  4. On the next page, click on "Add Forwarding Rule" and then follow the instructions.
  5. Click on "Add Rule" to create the rule.

NOTE: If you want to change an existing email forwarding rule, first delete the existing rule and wait several hours for the deletion to take effect. Then, add a new rule in its place.

POP3 Email

POP3 email accounts allow users to have mailboxes on a server with their domain name. This means that if you own the domain name, yourdomain.com, hosted by directNIC and sign up for a directNIC POP3 account, you can receive and send email at bob@yourdomain.com.

In order to set up POP3 email accounts for your domain, your domain must be on directNIC nameservers, i.e. using one of the directNIC hosting services such as free hosting, bannerless hosting, redirecting, parked, for sale, directDNS, etc. If your domain is hosted elsewhere, you cannot add directNIC POP3 email accounts to your domain (unless it uses directDNS).

The maximum size for an outgoing email message is 2MB, including its attachments. Each account can store up to 15MB of email. The price for the primary account is $10 per year, and for each additional email account for the same domain is $5 per year.

For more information on POP3 email, please read our POP3 Email User Guide at: http://directnic.com/help/guides/index.php?guide_id=14

Webmail

directNIC webmail is a typical mail client, just like Eudora or Outlook. The main difference between directNIC webmail and clients like Eudora and Outlook is that our client is web-based. The main advantage of using a web-based mail client is that you can easily access it from any computer with an Internet connection and a web browser.

directNIC webmail is not associated with a specific email address. It is a generic mail client. One webmail account can be used to check any number of POP3 or IMAP mail accounts. The only association between a specific email address and your webmail account may be for the discount we give for each POP3 account you purchase with webmail.

Pricing: Webmail costs $10 per year. For each POP3 mail account you have with directNIC we will give you one webmail discount of $5. Webmail initially comes with 5MB of storage space. You can add additional space in 10MB increments for $5 per year.

To purchase directNIC webmail, login to your directNIC account, then click on the link titled "Webmail Access" on the left side of the page under "Basic Options".

Other Services

directDNS

The Domain Name System (DNS) lets you host your own webserver and mail server for your domain name. Using a DNS service, such as directNIC's directDNS service, and a web server on your own computer, you can set www.yourdomain.com to be hosted on your computer, instead of using a commercial or free hosting service. However, you must be running a webserver, such as Apache. For detailed information about directDNS, please refer to our FAQ and type in keywords "directDNS" in the search window. The direct link to our FAQ is http://www.directNIC.com/help/faq.

Statistics Tracking

Check the traffic going to the domains that you have hosted with directNIC.

Full history statistics are available for all domains hosted with directNIC (not including redirected). Stats can be found at: https://secure.directNIC.com/myaccount/hosting/bannerless/stats.php

For domains using bannerless hosting or free hosting with frame type and pop-up type of advertising, you will need to copy a tracking script and paste it onto your index page HTML.

Merchant Account

A merchant account enables your business to accept online credit card payments from customers. There is no application fee and nearly every applicant will be approved instantly. For information, go to http://www.directnic.com/features/merchant.php

Free Parking

Temporarily park a domain after registering with directNIC to obtain an "under-construction" page.

To park your domain:

  1. Log into your account at https://secure.directNIC.com/myaccount
  2. Click on "Domain Manager."
  3. Click on the "Change Hosting Information" link, represented by the house icon, to the right of the domain you want to park, under the "Options" heading.
  4. Click on the "Change Hosting Type" link and select the radial button, next to "Parked domain."
  5. Click the "Change Hosting Type" button.

SSL Certificate

We sell three kinds of SSL certificates from Comodo's InstantSSL line of products at a discounted rate:

1. InstantSSL Pro: This certificate can be purchased up to 3 years at a low cost of $45/year with a warranty of $100,000.

2. PremiumSSL: This is the type of cert we have been offering but the price now is only $60/year. It can be also purchased up to 3 years. The new price applies to renewals of certificates purchased last year.

3. PremiumSSL Wildcard (i.e.: *.dndchosting.com): This certificate can only be purchased for 1 year for now, but it can be purchased for 1, 2 or 5-server license. Wildcard cert can be used to support multiple virtual hosts at a low cost of $425.00/year for a single server (2 servers - $445/year, 5 servers - $475/year).

PremiumSSL warranty and PremiumSSL Wildcard warranty are both $250,000.00 and have prioritized support.

Nameserver Registration

If you have a static IP and DNS running properly on your computer, you can register a nameserver through directNIC based on the domain that registered through directNIC. To register your own nameserver:

  1. Log into your account at https://secure.directNIC.com/myaccount.
  2. Click on "Domain Manager" and click the "Change Nameserver Information" icon next to the domain desired.
  3. Click on the "Create Nameserver" link at the top of the page.
  4. Enter your server hostname and IP address for the nameserver and click "Create Nameserver."

Warning: Using "Create Nameserver" service will create an actual nameserver for which advanced configuration and software is required at the IP address of the computer. Do not create a nameserver unless software has already been installed to run the nameserver.

SiteCreator

SiteCreator is a service that creates custom-designed websites for users from a wide array of templates available on the SiteCreator site.

A 3-page site costs $20. A 5-page site costs $30. A 10-page site costs $40. To use SiteCreator, go to: http://sitecreator.directnic.com. Select the pages you want and click on "Submit."

You can use any domain name for the SiteCreator sites. If the domain is not hosted or registered with directNIC, you can choose to have the website files emailed to you or download the files then you can upload the files yourself to your hosting server.

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