Free domain registration?

[JoeRT]

Someone find the catch... QUICK! :D

http://www.registerfree.com/news/press2.html


------------------
Joe Torsitano
www.weatherforyou.com (http://www.weatherforyou.com)
www.tiswest.com (http://www.tiswest.com)

[Dan Kaplan]

It's not exactly a catch, but "RegisterFREE, the pioneers of low-cost domain name registration" makes me wonder...[nbsp][nbsp]What came first, the company name, the low cost registration, the free registration, or the planning for one of the above?

Also, it seems rather misleading to say that domain registration has no cost involved.[nbsp][nbsp]"The fact is, you're not buying a physical item. You're not purchasing something that was built with materials and labor. You're buying a domain name, which is a database transaction"[nbsp][nbsp]I suppose it depends how you define physical...[nbsp][nbsp]Domain Name Servers and machinery and man hours to register the domains seems like something that should cost money.

Deal?

[Justin]

I agree with Dan - though $70 might be a little steep, there are quite a few registrars who are charging much less. Also note that I cannot find a price anywhere on their site (besides the "Free" thing) - though they claim to be the cheapest for com/net/org domain names... Is this one of those things where you find out only after paying or???

Either way, you could have told us about this maybe, oh, I don't know, before the free domain thing was over? :P

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[sheila]

I thought the article that was referenced in the article starting this thread, indicated a regular price of $19.95 (lowest priced registrar in North America). I didn't look at any of their other pages, though.

The "free" hour isn't up yet. It is still 3/22/00 here in California. But even over there in FL, it is still the early wee hours of 3/23/00. You still have about 20 hours until the free hour of domain registration starts.

I wonder if it will be possible to even connect to their server during that hour? Well, I suppose I will try. I gotta get home by 6 pm tomorrow (keep in mind, it's still Wed. here in CA. For about 45 more minutes.)

[Justin]

DOH! I looked at the date/time his message was posted, and say that it was after 12:00 on 3/23 - thinking that it had already been over for two hours... guess I needed some sleep :)

Oops...

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[Phil Chaney]

I'm not a NS fan, but the fine print does not necessarily mean that RegisterFree is using NS as a registrar - the fine print merely states what is true - that all TLDs (.com, .net, .org, and .edu) end up in the NSI registry.[nbsp][nbsp]In other words, no matter which registrar anyone uses, the master domain record is still held in NSI's servers.[nbsp][nbsp]Registrars other than NS simply provide a way to manage your record(s), keep a monopoly at bay, and create competition.[nbsp][nbsp]The registrars simply act as an agent (authorized by ICANN) for NS by transacting the registration and updating the NS servers. (Think of how travel agents operate, except only one airline.)[nbsp][nbsp]Each registrar has a copy of your record on their own servers, and this information is translated to Network Solutions format each time a record change is made.

For the record, RegisterFree uses Melbourne IT (out of Australia) as its registrar, an accredited ICANN registrar.
Look here for the TOS:
http://www.domainregistry.net/help/disclaimer.html

-Phil

[tedloh]

Couldn't pass up the chance to try, so got out of bed early.

It's now 10:11 PM EST - and they are still overwhelmed, so the offer is STILL open if you guys want to try your luck.

I haven't got past the first step yet - only once where it said the name I wanted was taken.

Hmm.[nbsp][nbsp]I got through now... must have just needed a kick in the rear! :P
------------------
Ted (Chief Do-It-All)
Tygre Systems Co Ltd
Bangkok, Thailand, Land of Smiles :) :)
http://www.tygresystems.com (work currently on hold)
ted@tygresystems.com
[This message has been edited by tedloh (edited 03-23-00@10:13 pm)]

[JoeRT]

Well I found out what the catch was... their server was down the whole hour.[nbsp][nbsp]At 9:03 P.M. their site was still saying free registration would start momentarily.[nbsp][nbsp]Then, for the rest of the hour, I tried almost constantly to get in and couldn't.[nbsp][nbsp]Also tried pinging them... 9 out of 10 times it came back Request timed out.

If they come back with another press release about the hundreds or thousands of domain names they registered during that hour, I'm going to be REAL skeptical about them.

------------------
Joe Torsitano
www.weatherforyou.com (http://www.weatherforyou.com)
www.tiswest.com (http://www.tiswest.com)

[tedloh]

Joe, keep trying.[nbsp][nbsp]I finally got one.[nbsp][nbsp]They seem to be better now and have promised a full hour.

Of course, they had to take down all of Tucow's other services to do this...
------------------
Ted (Chief Do-It-All)
Tygre Systems Co Ltd
Bangkok, Thailand, Land of Smiles :) :)
http://www.tygresystems.com (work currently on hold)
ted@tygresystems.com
[This message has been edited by tedloh (edited 03-23-00@10:30 pm)]

[Charles Capps]

I'm currently in the process of registering.

It seems to dislike the fact that my last name is five characters and that my city has a space in it, or something...

*edit*[nbsp][nbsp]It seems the app is malfunctioning and not passing along the domain name in the HTML form![nbsp][nbsp]Gotta love that.
[This message has been edited by Charles Capps (edited 03-23-00@10:50 pm)]

[Deb]

I gave it a shot but gave up quickly after finding that "FutureQuest, Inc." was not a valid organization name... however "FutureQuest" passed.[nbsp][nbsp]Then neither my PO Box nor Street Address were ever considered valid and after three tries I was told "Sorry only one domain per person" shrug....

Deb
[nbsp]- Fool me once, shame on you.[nbsp][nbsp]Fool me twice, shame on me.[nbsp][nbsp]Third time.... wont happen.

[Charles Capps]

Ok, some creative HTML editing, and now my domain is apparently registered....[nbsp][nbsp]

[JoeRT]

Well I never even got "in the front door" and it's almost an hour and a half after closing time.[nbsp][nbsp]Oh well![nbsp][nbsp]I imagine this was some kind of experiment... hope they share the results![nbsp][nbsp]:P[nbsp][nbsp]I did get into some cgi section at some point about half way through the hour, and it gave me the dreaded error 500![nbsp][nbsp]I don't know if they quite expected this.

------------------
Joe Torsitano
www.weatherforyou.com (http://www.weatherforyou.com)
www.tiswest.com (http://www.tiswest.com)

[This message has been edited by JoeRT (edited 03-23-00@11:31 pm)]

[Charles Capps]

I did some digging and found http://206.102.88.68/help/

Apparently successful registrations get emailed with a modification password of some sort.

Hmm.

[jak]

and... for whatever it's worth. in the fine print:

When you register a name through RegisterFREE, you can use this domain anywhere on the internet. All domains registered through RegisterFREE end up in the NSI Registry and can be used with any web hosting company and any internet service provider. The NSI Registry administers the authoritative database for .com, .net, .org, and .edu domain names.

yep, our friendly "Network Solutions" registrar. :)

sorry for all network solutions fans, i'm still trying to work out whatever bad karma i must have had, to have network solutions take 9 months to post a client's simple domain name ownership change.

julie

[sheila]

Well I never even got "in the front door" and it's almost an hour and a half after closing time. Same here. I never did get to any sort of cgi screen. I sat here with school papers in front of the computer hitting the return key every few minutes in between marking papers.

Really, it was quite silly. I mean, my time isn't worth it to sit around for an hour+. It's only $12 to register a domain with joker.com and nowhere near the frustration. Mostly I just wanted to see if I could get through, I guess. Now I know the answer to that one. Just did get through to their "sorry..the free reg is over" screen.

<No != Now>

I figure, they must be taking these losses out of their advertising budget. Where else can you buy the kind of advertising, where it gets reported in &quot;news&quot;-type publications and posted on discussion boards and friends e-mail the info to each other? It raises their profile, and a lot of people will probably end up to register domains with them for the $19.95 regular price as a result of this whole stunt.

The &quot;we believe it should be free&quot; stuff doesn't ring true IMNSHO.


[This message has been edited by sheila (edited 03-24-00@12:31 pm)]

[Dan Kaplan]

my time isn't worth it to sit around for an hour+. It's only $12 to register a domain with joker.com I was waiting for someone to mention that.[nbsp][nbsp];)

Dmand

[tedloh]

Modification password?[nbsp][nbsp]I certainly haven't got that yet, nor is the domain listed in anyone's database - in fact whois at NSI reports the domain available.

I should have taken screen captures...

As for the hour, you're right - but I was doing other stuff anyhow.[nbsp][nbsp]I just happened to wake up early because the house was full of noisy kids...
------------------
Ted (Chief Do-It-All)
Tygre Systems Co Ltd
Bangkok, Thailand, Land of Smiles :) :)
http://www.tygresystems.com (work currently on hold)
ted@tygresystems.com
[This message has been edited by tedloh (edited 03-24-00@02:00 am)]

[tedloh]

Hundreds of thousands, yada yada yada.[nbsp][nbsp]NSI registry couldn't handle the load, yada yada yada.[nbsp][nbsp]Only thousands managed to get a name.

Perhaps most important:
At this point, we ask all those who were unable to register a domain name
to send an email to cs@registerfree.com and let us know, so we can deal with
each query personally.
Does this mean you can still claim a domain name?

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&amp;STORY=/www/story/03-24-2000/0001173116&amp;EDATE=
------------------
Ted (Chief Do-It-All)
Tygre Systems Co Ltd
Bangkok, Thailand, Land of Smiles :) :)
http://www.tygresystems.com (work currently on hold)
ted@tygresystems.com
[This message has been edited by tedloh (edited 03-24-00@02:13 am)]

[Phil Chaney]

nor is the domain listed in anyone's database - in fact whois at NSI reports the domain available.
I believe the whois database (http://www.nsiregistry.com/whois/) is only updated every 12 hours or so (usually between 3 and 5 AM/PM EST), so it may be a little while longer before you see the record.

Supposedly the whois engine below traverses the various registrars and provides a more thorough search - its provided by RegisterFree, so who knows for sure...
http://www.wwhois.com/

Good luck!

-Phil

[Justin]

Why do I not doubt that the &quot;today's news&quot; thing was written long ago, during the planning of this publicity thing? :P

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[Brian]

My brother got to the site at the appropriate time and it said there was a $20.00 a year fee but “free registration”.

What a joke, they “registered” it free but make you pay an admin fee of $20.00 a year. From their I told him to hold off and he ended up using dotster..

He could have been reading the wrong thing on the site but I doubt it. When I tried going to that URL I got internal errors on a tucows site...

-Brian

[JoeRT]

Publicity from planned failure... they probably learned well from AOL.[nbsp][nbsp]:P

------------------
Joe Torsitano
www.weatherforyou.com (http://www.weatherforyou.com)
www.tiswest.com (http://www.tiswest.com)

[Charles Capps]

My little HTML form editing trick actually worked![nbsp][nbsp]pleh.net is now registered.

Now I have to get them to send me the access key so I can set DNS servers...

[tedloh]

What the heck?

Charles, did you get an email from namezero?[nbsp][nbsp]Or maybe I got it mixed up with something else...

In any case, this place now claims to do free domains!

http://www.namezero.com/default.htm

If it's true... shhhhh keep it secret until we have a chance to register a few hundred more...
------------------
Ted (Chief Do-It-All)
Got2Bet.com - The Net's Winner's Circle
http://www.got2bet.com
ted@tygresystems.com

[Charles Capps]

The problem being that you're not the owner of the domain...[nbsp][nbsp]They seem to have 100% control over it.

[tedloh]

Apparently, for the first year, then it is released to you to do as you wish.

I am now the proud owner of tedloh.com![nbsp][nbsp]LMAO!

I don't even remember asking for this, unless I was just testing something out.[nbsp][nbsp]Oh well, let's see what happens, I might try it out if it looks good.

Meanwhile, RegisterFREE finally sends a mail saying sorry for the dealy, we'll send the keys out shortly.[nbsp][nbsp]So almost a week and we still can't do anything...
------------------
Ted (Chief Do-It-All)
Got2Bet.com - The Net's Winner's Circle
http://www.got2bet.com
ted@tygresystems.com

[Charles Capps]

Better a week (or two) than a year![nbsp][nbsp]*L*