Domain Names

Parked Domain Services – Infrastructure Upgrades (18th/19th August 2012)

We are shortly commencing the upgrades of all hardware and infrastructure related to the parked domain name services. This will improve security, performance and reliability of all related domain services including:

  • DNS Management
  • Email forwarding
  • Web Forwarding
  • Parked Mailboxes
  • Domain Homepages

These upgrades only concern parked domain name customers and not any hosting accounts will be affected. If your domain name is using name servers other than ns.microlite1.com then this upgrade will not  concern any of your services.

The hardware will be installed and tested by 1st August and migration testing will begin 7th August. We anticipate final completion of the migration to commence weekend 18th/19th August. The entire process will be complete by midnight on Sunday 19th August.

We will disable the Domain Control Panel at 0300 Saturday 18th and it will be re-enabled 0300 Monday 20th. During this period there may be intermittent outages or propagation issues which we endeavour to keep to a minimum. Our priority will be to have the services 100% active by 0300 Monday 20th August.

For information purposes (you do not need to do anything) the parked domain name servers host names will remain the same however the IP addresses will change as follows:

  • ns.microlite1.com -> currently 66.98.136.44 -> changes to 109.75.164.106
  • ns2.microlite1.com -> currently 66.98.137.170 -> changes to 109.75.164.107

This will mean that there will be a propagation delay between changes however this should cause minimal disruption as both sets of IP addresses will remain active during this period.

Thank you for your patience and support during this time. If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us.

What does “Renewal request being processed” mean?

This is a Nominet accounting status code indicating the registration status of your domain name. Even though it says “Renewal request being processed.”, this also means your domain is fully renewed. Once 30 days has passed, the status will change to “Registered until renewal date”.

Nominet explain the (sometimes confusing) status as follows: “This status is used after first registration but before the initial registration fee has been received.  Please note that we (Nominet) issue monthly invoices, so it is possible that if this status is displayed your registrar has not yet been invoiced for the domain name.”.

For more information, see Renewal request being processed at Nominet.

What does “Registration request being processed” mean?

This is a Nominet accounting status code indicating the registration status of your domain name. Even though it says “Registration request being processed.”, this also means your domain is fully registered. Once 30 days has passed, the status will change to “Registered until renewal date”.

Nominet explain the (sometimes confusing) status as follows: “This status is used after first registration but before the initial registration fee has been received.  Please note that we (Nominet) issue monthly invoices, so it is possible that if this status is displayed your registrar has not yet been invoiced for the domain name.”.

For more information, see Registration request being processed at Nominet.

Which domain extensions should I register?

This is a tough question if you are registering your first domain and you are also on a tight budget.

  • As a minimum, you need to register the .co.uk if you are a UK based company and also the .com version if available.
  • If your site is important,  consider registering as many extensions as possible to prevent others pretending to be you.
  • While your business is new you can register the domains at cost. Once you are established, obtaining the domain names from a squatter is going to be expensive, if not impossible.
  • Find a comfortable budget for your domain registrations. Annually the costs is much less than it used to be.
  • You may need to consider registering misspellings if your brand name can easily be misspelt for additional protection.

The reason you need to register both the .co.uk and the .com becomes apparent once your site becomes successful. Do you really want someone to launch a site with your company brand and have them ride on your coat tails – or even bring your business in to disrepute? So, if you can, get both the .co.uk and the .com extensions.

So how about the rest of the extensions?

If you are serious about your business, you need to purchase as many extensions as your budget will afford. Domain registration is very cheap these days and there are no excuses for cutting corners. Once your business is successful it will be very difficult if not impossible to collect the extensions after they have been registered by other parties.

So I should register all of the extensions?

If you can, in this order, you should take the .co.uk, .com, .net, .biz, .info and .eu. As stated earlier, if you are serious about your business then register as many of the extensions as you can afford.

Domain Mailboxes – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

We offer mailboxes with our parked domain services. The mailboxes supplied with parked domain names operate slightly differently to hosting mailboxes, this FAQ should help in answering some of the common questions regarding parked domains.

How should my name servers be set?

For parked domain mailboxes you domain name servers need to be set to point to the parking server (MICROLITE1). The name servers should be set to:

  • ns.microlite1.com
  • ns2.microlite1.com

If your name servers are not set to the parking name servers then your domain name will not be connected to your domain mailbox service and no email will be received to your mailbox. Any name server changes are subject to the usual global DNS propagation delay of up to 72 hours.

How do I access my domain mailbox?

You can access your domain mailbox be using the login details in your welcome email. We currently offer Squirrelmail as the webmail client for domain mailboxes which you can access using the following URL:

http://www.microlite1.com/webmail

You can also add your domain mailbox POP user details to your email client (such as Outlook) by using the incoming mail server name “mail.microlite1.com”. The outgoing mail server name must be that as provided by your ISP.

How do I send emails from my domain mailbox?

You can send email from your domain mailbox by logging in to your webmail client (currently based on Squirrelmail) at the URL below:

http://www.microlite1.com/webmail

It is not possible to send email using your local email client at this time unless your ISP allows you to send outgoing mail direct from your PC.

Can I send email through my PC mail client eg Outlook?

It is not possible to send email using your email client at this time. Emails can only be sent by using the webmail client accessable here: http://www.microlite1.com/webmail

Can I receive email through my PC email client eg Outlook?

Yes, simply use your mailbox name (eg mbname-domain-co-uk) as  your POP username and mail.microlite1.com as your incoming POP mail server name. This will enable you to download your emails to your local email client.