Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Recently I had to change the CNAME records for several domains in order to point them to an online venue.

In the past I used eNom but as I moved the majority of my domains to Fabulous.com I wasn’t familiar with their bulk tools.

Fabulous offers a DNS Template feature, that allows you to apply a profile (“template”) against a number of domains.

I created the template, adding CNAME records for “www” and “@” and saved the template with a name of my choice.

To use these features, domains at Fabulous must use the myns1 and myns2 DNS pair. As it’s not a preset profile on Fabulous, I had to create a new nameserver profile, adding those two to it. It took me 1 minute, literally.

The next step was to bulk edit the DNS for the domains, so I pasted my list of domains into the relevant box and applied the new DNS profile to them.

Once this was done, the final step was to apply the DNS template to the domains. In 5 short minutes I was thus able to switch and point my domains in bulk to the venue of my choice.

Fabulous offers many more features, including a security fob that I reviewed in the past. Check it out!

While onto the 3rd year of using Fabulous.com as my primary domain registrar, I can’t but praise the Australian company for their efficiency and support.

Fabulous.com offers paramount domain security and they are proud of their ability to offer the famous Fabulous fob, which I enjoyed reviewing a while back.

The dedication with which Fabulous.com addresses customer issues was not restricted to legendary Mike Robertson, who has since moved on to form Domain Guardians.

Two days ago I had a special request about a custom report on my 2010 transactions at Fabulous and after emailing my account manager I hoped for a response that would not take longer than 3-4 business days. It’s tax time once again and accurate presentation of data to Uncle Sam is crucial.

To my pleasant surprise, Fabulous.com sent me a detailed report the following day, despite the 12-odd hours of time difference between them and US East Coast.

I could not be happier with this speedy response and once again I’d like to recommend Fabulous.com to any domainer that is serious about using a solid domain registrar for their domain portfolio.

A little over a month ago I posted about how a domain name that I own received 2,500 WHOIS queries at the Registrar, Fabulous.com

In a nutshell, Fabulous.com keeps track of the number of WHOIS lookups for domains registered with them and lists those numbers alongside the domain’s expiration date, inside your account control panel.

It’s obvious that domains that are looked up the most are usually monitored for pending availability by third parties and are entered into a number of droplists.

My little experiment so far has piled another 450 WHOIS queries to the original 2,500 – all while the domain expires in 15 days from now. Originally, I planned to wait almost 3 months before posting an update here but I thought it’d be better to keep track of this milestone as well.

The bottom line: vultures are always out there checking out your best and most valuable domains; it’s great that Fabulous.com provides this type of information that can help you gauge the value of your domain names – and a reminder to renew them well in advance!

One of the benefits of using Fabulous.com as my primary domain registrar is the ability to instantly track the number of WHOIS queries a domain receives.

With the proliferation of aftermarket services, domains are often polled and queried; that’s an indication of popularity that can be used as a secondary measurement of traffic.

When domains approach their expiration date, such WHOIS queries increase; domains that are “due to expire” begin to appear in pending droplists of drop-catching services.

To put it plainly, the vultures are watching.

Thus, it’s good to be able to see what the vultures are planning and to be able to gauge the popularity and selling potential of your domain names.

I just sorted my list of domains that expire in March at Fabulous by the number of WHOIS queries and I was amazed to find that one of them has had 2,500 WHOIS queries with 55 days to expiry. I’ve seen numbers in the upper hundreds *after* expiration, but nothing quite like this.

I can’t imagine what the number will be with 30 days to go or even past expiry, but I think I will play a game with the vultures, just to experiment a bit with their food.

I will let the domain expire for at least 2 weeks before I renew it, to maximize the WHOIS query stats and I’ll post the results after I renew it.

See you on the same topic in three months from now

I’ve been using Fabulous.com as my primary domain registrar for two years now; it was a choice that was made despite having had a long term commitment to eNom.

As I’ve reviewed the features of domainer-grade registrars in the past and presented the extensive level of security Fabulous.com provides, I shall add nothing more of my own.

Fabulous just sent out this email which further indicates the strong commitment to security that they have been providing in their 10+ years of existence:

In light of recent security/fraud issues amongst the domain community, I feel it is important to remind you of the additional levels of security Fabulous.com offer to help protect your domain assets. We provide both domain and account level security to minimize the risk of losing domains through fraud and/or hijacking.

Account Security

Fabulous.com offers two forms of Account Security to protect sensitive areas within your account; the Fabulous Security Key or Challenge/Response Security Questions. Both provide an additional layer of security across certain sections of the account including:

• Transfers
• Name Servers
• Pushes
• Finance
• Domain Edits
• E-mail Forwarding

If an account password happened to be compromised, having access to these specific functions would put your domains at risk of hijacking. By taking advantage of either the Fabulous Security Key or Challenge/Response Security Questions, access to these areas of your account are given only if authentication is successful.

Domain Protection

For over 8 years Fabulous.com has allowed domain owners to apply an Executive Lock (E-lock), which provides even greater protection on a domain level.

The E-lock effectively freezes a domain’s registry settings and can only be removed by Fabulous.com management after a special condition(s), specified by the client, has been fulfilled. A domain under E-lock cannot be transferred, pushed or have the name servers modified.

I strongly urge you to apply E-locks to your most premium names and also use one of the Account Level Security options. In doing so, you can feel confident that your domain assets will remain secure.

If you have any questions or need assistance with your account, please don’t hesitate in contacting your Account Manager, Support, or myself.

For those that are attending TRAFFIC Miami, I look forward to seeing you there.

Cheers,

Mike Robertson
Fabulous.com
Business Development Manager