Kevin Ohashi - Entrepreneur I Love Learning New Things.

Glenn Stokes registered Plants.com in 1995 for his tropical plants website.

Glenn Stokes literally wrote the book on bananas. He just sold Plants.com for $450,000.

Glenn Stokes is an expert in tropical plants. He has traveled to all seven continents and presented across Europe, Asia and Africa. Stokes has named about 40 different plants and introduced a lot of plants to the United States. He’s even written a book about bananas. Yes, all about bananas.

In the 1990s Stokes, the proprietor of a Louisiana business called Stokes Tropicals, set out to create a website selling tropical plants. He wanted every plant to be photographed and include a common name, not just a scientific one. He created the first catalog and website to do this.

“The internet was a very primitive environment back then,” Stokes said. “The internet got started and we had to come up with a website, so I hired a college student and he just worked part-time to create something.”

Of course, that something had to have a domain name.

“At that time web names weren’t even fashionable,” he explained. “Everyone was picking out what they wanted. Cars.com, you know, generics. I figured the best thing for us was Plants.com.”

Domain names became very fashionable after that as the dot.com bubble grew. Stokes turned down multiple offers for Plants.com. Then the bubble burst.

Fast forward to this year. 23 years after Stokes registered Plants.com, Stokes worked with Dave Evanson at Sedo and agreed to sell the domain to 1-800-Flowers.com for $450,000.

During the dot.com bubble, he received offers for more than twice that amount. But Stokes pointed out that many generic category domains were selling for two or three times that much back then so it was possible to turn down the offers.

The timing of Sedo’s overture was fortunate. After decades in the business, Stokes is getting out of the nursery business because of changes in the tropical plant business. He will continue to do landscaping.

Stokes would also like to sell StokesTropicals.com because he no longer needs it. He said the name recognition of Stokes in the tropicals space could help another company.

While Stoke’s tropical plant nursery won’t live on, Plants.com will as a new website.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Customers should have more control over major updates.

WordPress 5.0. Photo from WordPress.org.

Managed WordPress hosting companies help their customers keep WordPress up-to-date. This is important; analysis by GoDaddy showed that over half of hacked WordPress sites were running an outdated version of the software.

Generally speaking, I think it’s good for hosts to auto-update WordPress versions. Going from 4.9.4 to 4.9.5–just a security and maintenance release–is no big deal. But going to an entirely new version number is an issue.

Last week WordPress 5.0 was released. I have a handful of sites on GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress and GoDaddy quickly updated them to 5.0. This broke one of the sites. In my case, it was a theme that didn’t work with 5.0 and I was able to fix it myself. Another issue people face are plugins that don’t work with 5.0.

The auto-upgrade caused an RSS feed containing podcasts to be down for a couple of hours, which was business-impacting.

At a minimum, web hosts should warn their customers before a major upgrade like this. Inform them that the upgrade will take place in seven days and ask them to make sure they are ready for the upgrade. Let them delay the upgrade if necessary. Also, suggest that they upgrade manually during this period so they are available to troubleshoot should something go wrong.

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Stokes Tropicals cashes in on domain name.

Stokes Tropicals used the Plants.com site (picture from Screenshots.com). It sold the domain to 1-800-Flowers.com.

A Louisiana company has sold the domain name Plants.com to 1-800-Flowers(NASDAQ: FLWS) for $450,000.

Sedo domain name broker Dave Evanson announced the sale this morning on social media:

Stokes Tropicals Garden Center is the last listed company in Whois records before changing to 1-800-Flowers. It was likely the original 1995 registrant of the domain name. The company has a Facebook page showing its garden center in Louisiana.

I imagine for a local garden center it made sense to sell this domain for $450,000. It also made sense for a national giant like 1-800-Flowers to buy it. 1-800-Flowers has an entire section dedicated to plants.

I reached out to the seller for comment and will update this story if I hear back. Update: I interviewed the seller Glenn Stokes. Here is the post.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Here are four improvements GoDaddy should make for its aftermarket business.

GoDaddy continues to grow its aftermarket business. It has acquired massive portfolios and won exclusive partnerships with registrars to auction their expiring domain inventory.

That said, the company has many improvements to make. I often share feedback directly with companies but it always helps to nudge them a bit by writing about it. Companies have lots of things on their to-do list, so a little nudge might get some action.

Here are four things I think GoDaddy should do to improve its aftermarket experience.

Improve the For Sale Landers

It’s great that GoDaddy now allows domainers to use its Afternic for-sale landers. That said, these need improvement. This is low-hanging fruit and given that GoDaddy has a large portfolio of names to sell now, should boost both domainer sales and GoDaddy’s NameFind sale.

The first thing that’s wrong with the lander is its responsiveness. Once a domain goes past 11 or 12 characters the TLD gets pushed to two lines on a full laptop display. Here’s an example:

This makes your .com look like a .co.

The mobile experience also needs work. Here’s what this domain looks like on my iPhone:

Another thing that many people have asked for is GoDaddy branding on these landers. Even if it’s “Afternic Powered By GoDaddy” with the GoDaddy logo, this will instill trust in people that have never heard of Afternic before.

Delete domain names from within the app

GoDaddy’s Investor App is brilliant in its simplicity. I do all of my bidding from the app, not the site. One feature I’d really like is the ability to delete domains from your watch or bidding list in the app if you no longer want to bid on them.

Perhaps it’s because the domain has gotten too expensive or you just decide you no longer want to bid on it. Either way, the app can get very cluttered with domains. Since you can swipe right to bid, why not make it so you can swipe left to delete?

Bulk Watch capabilities

GoDaddy Auctions lets you bulk bid for domains. But many people prefer to watch domains rather than bid on them immediately so they don’t tip off other people about their bidding intentions.

You can do this by adding domains to the watch list, but this requires searching for each domain individually and clicking the watch icon. It would save lots of time if you could bulk watch domains, kind of like how you can bulk backorder domains on NameJet.

As for bulk bidding, this isn’t something I do often. I tried it last week and ran into lots of problems. I got many errors, and when I fixed them I still couldn’t submit the names.

Include the sale price on Afternic emails

Elliot Silver mentioned this the other day and I feel his pain. When you get an email from Afternic saying that your domain sold you then have to log into Afternic to see how much it sold for. It seems like it would be fairly easy to pull this data into the email.

Lots to do

I realize that Godaddy is devoting development resources to integrating Afternic into GoDaddy and many other aftermarket projects. But it seems like these shouldn’t require much work. If I were to vote for the top two, I’d say fixing the for sale landers and adding bulk watch capabilities. The landers should be very easy to fix.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Who had the best crystal ball for 2018?

In this special episode, we’ll listen to the predictions people made a year ago for 2018 in the domain industry. Who was right? Who missed the mark? The 2019 predictions episode is coming soon, so this will be a good warmup for that episode.

Also: Expired domain shakeup, Amazon buys another valuable domain name, PIR gets a new CEO and Uniregistry shrinks its brand.

Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Some of the Complainant’s claims are easily disproven.

I’m often amazed by cybersquatting claims under UDRP. This weekend I read a case that was extremely disturbing.

Grimco, Inc., a distributor of products to the sign industry, filed a UDRP against the domain name Briteline.com. Briteline.com is owned by Mike Forde of Florida and has a registrant name of Briteline Consulting.

Forde was unable to respond to the UDRP. According to a note the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) received from a person identifying herself as Forde’s sister, he sustained a serious head injury this summer.

What bothers me about this filing is that I can easily show that this is not a case of cybersquatting under UDRP with about five minutes of research.

According to the decision published by NAF, Grimco argued:

Respondent undoubtedly was aware of Complainant and its BRITELINE mark as the Domain Name prominently features the BRITELINE mark and Complainant’s rights in the BRITELINE mark predate Respondent’s registration of the domain name.

Grimco claims common law rights dating to 2004. But the domain was registered in 1996! A quick look at historical Whois records shows that Forde has owned the domain since at least 2001 (and he was very likely the original registrant.)

The published decision also states that Grimco argued:

Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the Domain Name.

Again, this is easily disproven. The Whois record shows a registrant organization of Briteline Consulting.

Panelist Charles Kuechenmeister noted:

The name of the registrant organization contains the name “Briteline” but there is no evidence as to whether or the manner in which Respondent may have used this name in connection with a business, when any such use began, or the extent to which Respondent may actually have become known by that name.

Fair enough. Given that Forde did not respond to the case, the panelist had no proof of a connection.

But with a simple Google search for Mike Forde briteline consulting I discovered this business filing. It shows that a man named Michael Forde living at the same address listed in Whois started a business called Briteline Consulting in 1996, the same year the domain was registered.

I understand that the panelist doesn’t need to do this search (and given the outcome of the case it doesn’t really matter) but the Complainant could have easily discovered this.

Kuechenmeister denied Grimco’s case because the 1996 registration could not have been made in bad faith given the Complainant’s claimed trademark date. He should have gone further and considered a filing in abuse of the policy.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Verisign and the Gab controversy were top stories last month.

Last month’s headlines were dominated by news related to the U.S. government extending the Cooperative Agreement with Verisign. Let’s start by reviewing the top five posts on DNW in November, ranked by views:

1. Who wins, who loses from Trump Admin decision on domain names – You’re going to see a common theme emerge among the top stories. In this post, I reviewed the winners and losers from the decision to let Verisign increase prices on .com domain names.

2. Holy sh!t…Verisign just called out “Domain Scalpers” and its biggest customers – Just a day after getting U.S. approval to raise prices, Verisign threw domain investors under the bus.

3. U.S. Gov Grants Verisign .Com Price Hikes – If you don’t know the background for the first two stories, read this one.

4. Pennsylvania Attorney General subpoenas Epik over Gab.com domain name – Epik decided to accept Gab.com at its registrar and was repaid with a subpoena.

5. Domains suggest which cities might get XFL football teams – Domain names tipped off which cities were in the running for football teams.

I also had some great podcast interviews last month. Click the links to listen, or download them on your podcast app:

#209 – Going Global with Rolf Larsen

#210 – Brewing up Brew.com

#211 – 48 domains, $114k sales on $3400 investment

#212 – All about naming with Eli Altman

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Several software developers, a job search website and a music branding service all bought domain names this week.

The top overall sale fruitwraps.com was purchased by a food manufacturer called Hilton Whole Grain Millers. There were several other interesting end user purchases including two different BitCoin-related service providers.

Check out the list below, and you can view previous lists like this here.

Fruitwraps.com $27,300 – As noted above, this was bought by Hilton Whole Grain Millers, a manufacturer out of Canada. The domain forwards to a page on WowButter.com about a product called Fruitwrap. It combines peanut butter, fruit and what looks to be a tortilla. Frank Schilling’s Name Administration sold the domain.

SanierungsProfi.de €17,850 – Forwards to SanierungsProfi24.de. Now they own the brand name without the “24” for their construction and renovation project management company out of Germany.

Verway.com €15,000 – Forwarding to Verway.ch, this European lifestyle brand now owns the .com domain. According to the site, “VERWAY stands for modern, luxurious, trend-conscious and environmentally friendly products in the fields of beauty, wellness, home living, health, energy and crypto currency”. That’s a wide spectrum of product offerings.

DWallet.com €9,500 – It looks like someone is creating a Bitcoin-related site.

Feed.fr €7,000 – Currently forwards to Feed.co, which is owned by a French brand of nutritional bars.

JobWorker.com $6,000 – The Whois record is for a software development company in Florida. The domain is being developed into a job board.

Listen.net $5,500 – The top “other” sale for the week was purchased by a Brazilian company called ListenX, which provides “Music Branding” for businesses, with the tag line “The right music for all types of business”.

BTCProfit.com $4,500 – An online software provider for Bitcoin trading.

ZyOnline.com $3,800 – This site was purchased by Fashion Division, S.A. a Portuguese Company. It runs a site called ZippyKidstore.com, so this might be short for Zippy.

ArteConcert.com $3,750 – The domain forwards to Arte.tv, a music site operated by ARTE G.E.I.E. in France.

HIQ.de €3,500 – This is a much shorter domain for the software firm that uses HIQ-Projects.com. The short domain now forwards to the longer one.

Nachos.fr €3,000 – A Mexican restaurant franchise in France purchased this keyword domain. Nachos.com sold for $33,000 at NamesCon in 2016.

Tedra.com $2,400 – Forwarding to Tedra.es. This Spanish engineering firm specializes in computer and telecommunications systems, including national and international telephone systems, data center infrastructure and cybersecurity.

 

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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European company with FBA acronym sells FBA.com domain name to Amazon.com.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) has acquired the three-letter domain name FBA.com, most likely because of its popular Fulfillment By Amazon program.

Fulfillment By Amazon, commonly know as just FBA, is a service in which Amazon.com stores, picks, packs and ships products on behalf of other companies. This includes both companies selling products through the Amazon marketplace as well as ecommerce sites that want Amazon to handle fulfillment for them.

Selling products on Amazon through FBA has become very popular. It’s even turned into a bit of a solopreneur business opportunity. Listen to this DNW podcast from June to learn more about it. There’s a company in Austin that raised over $10 million to buy and build FBA businesses.

FBA.com was previously owned by a Great Britain company called Fee Based Advisors LLP.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Don’t harm small publishers with laws that only benefit large publishers.

In September I wrote about the European Union’s proposed copyright rules. One controversial aspect of these rules is to force websites to pay to snippet content from another website. A prime example is Google News, which publishes the headline and a small snippet from articles.

Google just published a blog post about what it thinks the ramifications of such a rule will be. It concurs with what I wrote in September: such a move would mostly harm small publishers.

As a small publisher myself, I rely on Google News to help get my content in front of people who might otherwise not see it. Everyone sees the latest post from The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other major publications. Smaller publishers don’t have this luxury.

Beyond just the immediate eyeballs, Google News also helps me get my stories picked up by larger publications, which in turn send more traffic to this site.

I understand why large publishers have concerns about Google News. It has become the starting point for many people seeking news. As I wrote previously:

Big publications might be frustrated that people treat Google News as their news destination rather than going directly to the news site’s homepage. But there are huge societal benefits to this. I get much more diverse viewpoints on Google News than I do on a news site, whether that’s MSNBC or Fox News.

At the same time, some people are frustrated with Google search’s featured snippets. These are the boxes that sometimes show in search results that pull out at least part of the information you’re seeking:

These are the holy grail for most website owners right now. I hear from people who say the click-throughs from these featured snippets are very high. At the same time, some people don’t like how a searcher might get the answer they seek without visiting the site. SEO thought leader Rand Fishkin has been particularly vocal about how websites should be able to opt-out of these snippets.

And that gets me to a proposed resolution. Rather than making snippets–whether in news or search results–something that sites need to get permission to use, let’s make an opt-out standard. Sites can already opt out of being included in search results. Let’s add a couple of other options in robots.txt for opting out of certain types of snippets.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Donuts co-founder will lead the .org registry.

Jon Nevett, new CEO of Public Interest Registry.

Jon Nevett has been named the new CEO of Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit that runs the .org top level domain name. Nevett will take over for Jay Daley, who was the interim CEO after Brian Cute left.

Nevett left Donuts–a company he co-founded–in October. Since then, rumors have been swirling that Nevett would take over the top job at PIR. He was the first person people named when I asked around at the ICANN meeting in Barcelona that month. The timing of his departure could have been attributed to Abry Partners acquiring Donuts, but Nevett’s background and sudden availability made him a front-runner.

It seems like a good fit for both Nevett and PIR. Nevett has a unique combination of experience with both the policy and business sides of running top level domain names. This will come in handy at PIR, a non-profit that effectively reports up (and donates its proceeds) to Internet Society.

Nevett has a law degree from Harvard and an undergraduate degree from Binghamton University. He already lives in Washington, D.C., where PIR is located.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Higher price tag applies only to registrations made after March 15, 2019.

The registry for .在线 (xn--3ds443g – “Dot Chinese Online”) is hiking prices by about 25 times for new registrations starting March 15, 2019.

TLD Registry, which operates two Chinese IDN top level domains, confirmed the price hike to Domain Name Wire.

The wholesale price for .在线 will increase from $7.88 to $200.00. It applies to new domain name registrations starting March 15 as well as renewals of those new registrations. Renewals of registrations made before the price increase are grandfathered at the lower price.

There are nearly 50,000 .在线 domains registered.

TLD Registry raised the price on its other TLD–.中文网 (xn--fiq228c5hs – “Dot Chinese Website”)–from $26.00 to $78.00 a couple of years ago.

Arto Isokoski, CEO of TLD Registry, explained that the new price increase “would fulfill the future margin needs of our channel partners and align with a strategy that will rely more on business to business salespeople talking with their customers and our target market.”

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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GoDaddy Auctions has landed another top 10 domain registrar.

GoDaddy Auctions has apparently picked up another registrar partner for its expired domain auctions: GMO. GMO domains are currently listed in GoDaddy’s expired domain auctions.

GMO is a Japan-based registrar and is one of the top ten domain registrars in the world in terms of .com domains registered. The registrar has about 2 million .com domains under management.

This new addition means that GoDaddy is monetizing at least some of the expired domain inventory from half of the top ten registrars. It also has partnerships with Tucows, Endurance International Group, and Namecheap.

Earlier this week Web.com announced that it had bought out its partner Tucows and is now the sole owner of NameJet. NameJet currently sells expired inventory from Web.com registrars Network Solutions and Register.com as well as inventory from Enom, which is owned by Tucows.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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It’s still going to be a long time before .web domain names are available to register.

Following a lengthy ICANN process and failed lawsuit filed by Donuts, Afilias has filed a complaint about .Web under ICANN’s Independent Review Process.

Here’s the backstory:

Nu Dot Co, a business founded by .Co’s founders, applied for the .web top level domain. At some point after applying, Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) decided it wanted to own .web and worked out a deal with Nu Dot Co in which Nu Dot Co would bid in the auction and Verisign would then buy the top level domain from it.

Nu Dot Co won the auction for $135 million, which was the amount of the second highest bid placed by Afilias.

Donuts subsequently sued, upset that Nu Dot Co pushed for an ICANN auction-of-last-resort in which the losers didn’t get to split the proceeds. Donuts lost its battle.

After Donuts exhausted its options, Afilias picked up the baton and filed for cooperative engagement with ICANN. Now it has escalated to the Independent Review Process.

In its filing, Afilias wrote:

…by failing to implement faithfully the New gTLD Program Rules, ICANN is enabling VeriSign to acquire the .WEB gTLD, the next closest competitor to VeriSign’s monopoly, and in so doing has eviscerated one of the central pillars of the New gTLD Program: to introduce and promote competition in the Internet namespace in order to break VeriSign’s monopoly.

It’s worth noting that neither Donuts nor Afilias filed complaints over an auction for .blog that had similar circumstances. The only differences were that it was a private auction and Automattic (WordPress) backed the winner.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Domain name registrar changes to shorter name.

Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry has changed its brand name to simply Uni.

The move coincided with the launch of a new app last week that makes it easy for users to get email or create a website.

On November 28, the company filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for Uni for several services including domain names, email and web hosting.

Intriguingly for a domain name company, it does not own Uni.com. That domain is owned by an Italian non-profit. For now, the website is still at Uniregistry.com.

While the logo on Uniregistry.com has changed to Uni, you’ll still find references to Uniregistry throughout the site and in emails the company sends.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Alvin Brown provides a tutorial on retrieving a list of domains from your GoDaddy account using GoDaddy’s API.

If you’re not familiar with GoDaddy’s Application Programming Interface (API), then you’re missing out on a great opportunity to streamline the management of your GoDaddy domain portfolio.

Why would anyone ever consider using GoDaddy’s API to manage my domain portfolio when GoDaddy provides a user-friendly Domain Manager experience?  That’s the question I hope to reveal and answer in today’s tutorial.

While GoDaddy’s user experience has greatly improved throughout the years (with additional areas for improvement to realize), GoDaddy’s API offers management opportunities for the following areas of interest:

• Abuse API
• Aftermarket API
• Agreements API
• Certificates API
• Countries API
• Domains API
• Orders API
• Shoppers API
• Subscriptions API 

This tutorial will focus on the Domains API section, specifically the GET Domains method — Retrieve a list of Domains for the specified Shopper.

Integrate the Domains method with a landing page and database using a bit of elbow grease, and you could be well on your way to creating a simple domain inquiry tracking system, or at the very least a backup for your domain portfolio.

Getting started

Before diving into this tutorial, be sure you have access to the following:

• A web host environment or localhost environment, preferably Linux hosting
• A GoDaddy Developer account (sign up)
• GoDaddy API Credentials (see here)
• A text editor (Notepad++, Sublime, TextWrangler, Dreamweaver, Notepad)

If you encounter issues setting up or logging into your GoDaddy Developer account, watch this video.

You’ll also need to become familiar with learning to use PHP curl to execute GoDaddy API calls.

To get started with this tutorial, open a text editor of your choice, name and save the following php file: domains.php.

Once the domains.php file is created, define a variable named domains and set it equal to the function we’ll soon discuss: getDomains();.

$domains = getDomains();

Retrieve a list of Domains using GoDaddy API

To retrieve a list of domains using GoDaddy’s API, I’ve chosen to create a function and have given it the name getDomains. Functions are quite helpful in regards to making code more portable and easily managed.

In the case of the getDomains function, it’ll contain PHP and cURL to instantiate the GoDaddy API call to retrieve a list of domains from your GoDaddy account.

I won’t cover all the nitty-gritty details of executing a GoDaddy API call using PHP.  However, there is no need to fear.  A tutorial exists to help get you acclimated: Getting Started With GoDaddy API Using PHP.

As for the specifics of the getDomains function, take a moment to review the first method of the Domains API via GoDaddy’s API Documentation.

The Domains API method contains the following parameters that act as filters when retrieving the list of domains from your GoDaddy account:

X-Shopper-Id – This parameter is the shopper id or account id of the respective account domains are being retrieved.  Although listed as a parameter, this parameter is not set as a query parameter.  The authentication or authorization process we’ll soon discuss replaces the X-Shopper-Id.

statuses – Set this parameter to return domains of a certain status.  There are over 224 available values to select from.  For this tutorial, use ‘ACTIVE’ as the value status value.  See documentation for full list of values.

statusGroupsOnly – Set this parameter to return domains from specified groups.  There are five different values for this field: INACTIVE, PRE_REGISTRATION, REDEMPTION, RENEWABLE, VERIFICATION_ICANN, and VISIBLE.  For this tutorial, a value is not set for this parameter.

limit – Set this parameter for the maximum number of domains to be returned.  For this tutorial, use ‘5’ or another integer as the value.  To return all domains, simply do not set a value for this parameter or forgo using the parameter.

marker – Set this parameter to offset results using a domain.  If you have hundreds of domains in your account, then this parameter could come in handy if you want to return domains after a certain domain. For this tutorial, a value is not set for this parameter.

includes – Set this parameter to include optional details about domains in the response.  The available values for this parameter are as follows: authCode, contacts, nameServers.  For this tutorial, a value is not set for this parameter.

modifiedDate – Set this parameter to only include results that have been modified since a specified date.  For this tutorial, a value is not set for this parameter.

Now that parameter options have been identified, it’s time to define and set the values accordingly.  Set the statuses and limit parameters to the following values using PHP variables status and limit respectively:

$status = ‘Active’;

$limit = ‘5’;

Using GoDaddy’s API Documentation, define a url variable and its value to be the base API url to retrieve domains with status and limit variables and their respective values appended to the url as query parameters.

$url = “https://api.godaddy.com/v1/domains?statuses=$status&limit=$limit”;

Next, change {API_KEY} and {API_SECRET} values to be your respective API credentials.  Generate an API key and secret to be used when instantiating and authorizing GoDaddy API calls.

Once API key and secret credentials are in place, the API call can be made to request and retrieve a list of active domains associated with your GoDaddy account.

The API call is made using PHP’s built-in cURL method.  The getDomains function returns a decoded json response object (i.e., dn variable returned at end of function) — think a list of your specified domains — containing domains.

Error checking and parsing domain response

While you likely don’t need to add error checking, it’s always in your best interest too.  To do so, I use an if else statement to check for errors by simply checking the response from the domains variable that is set equal to the getDomains function.

If the domains variable has an object key set for code, this means an error of some sort occurred when instantiating the GoDaddy API call request.

Within the if statement, simply explode and parse the response data for the message object key to obtain and display a human-readable error message. Feel free to refer to GoDaddy’s API Documentation for additional explanation and definition of each error.

Within the else statement, I can proceed to parse the response data and display the following attributes for each domain:

• createdAt
• domain
• domainId
• expirationProtected
• expires
• holdRegistrar
• locked
• nameServers
• privacy
• renewAuto
• renewDeadline
• renewable
• status
• transferProtected

Most of the aforementioned attributes are intuitive and somewhat self explanatory.  Feel free to refer to GoDaddy’s API Documentation for additional explanation and definition of each attribute.

For this tutorial, I display only the domain name immediately followed by a line break using and echoing the msg variable to the web browser.

Time to test your technical chops

Well, you’ve endured to the end!  Now it’s time to test your technical chops.

The code in its entirety should lie similar to the gd-domains.php file contained in the YourGoDaddyDomains.zip file.

DOWNLOAD YourGoDaddyDomains.zip

PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO ADD YOUR RESPECTIVE GODADDY API CREDENTIALS OR THIS TUTORIAL WILL NOT WORK!

Download, extract, and save the gd-domains.php file to an accessible web directory. Open gd-domains.php via a web browser (just like how you would visit a web page – http://yourdomain/gd-domains.php).

Once gd-domains.php is opened and executed via a web browser, your web browser should display a list of domains identical to domains listed in your GoDaddy account.

Closing Thoughts

I hope this and previous tutorials spark your interest as well as ideas for how GoDaddy’s API can be used to become more efficient and effective in managing your domain portfolio external of GoDaddy’s native user interface and experience.

As I stated in the opening, integrating a landing page and database with this tutorial provides an opportunity to create a simple domain inquiry tracking system, or a backup of your domain portfolio at least.

In closing, please do not hesitate to leave me questions, comments, or propose ideas for future tutorials using GoDaddy’s API.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Top 10 registrars juggle places in latest monthly report.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com registry. This registrar-by-registrar report covers August 2018.

Note that HiChina is now listed as Alibaba in the official reports, so I’ve changed the name on this report.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations. There was a bit of shifting as Endurance had a good month and NameSilo dropped a bit.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 920,365 (916,032 in July)
2. Alibaba (HiChina) 224,383 (237,296)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 200,563 (212,279)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 153,130 (127,916)
5. Xin Net Technology Corporation 144,999 (129,492)
6. NameCheap Inc. 139,914 (124,011)
7. Web.com++ 103,022 (93,535)
8. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 95,841 (94,033)
9. NameSilo 86,955 (127,451)
10. 1&1 47,333 (not in top 10)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of August 2018. There were no changes, but I suspect that once we see the October or November report, Google will have surpassed GMO.

1. GoDaddy* 48,907,328 (48,659,723 in July)
2. Tucows** 12,816,784 (12,834,441)
3. Endurance+ 7,357,344 (7,411,874)
4. Web.com++ 6,722,545 (6,721,550)
5. Alibaba 5,813,977 (5,683,428)
6. Namecheap 4,354,411 (4,312,430)
7. 1&1 3,701,944 (3,716,477)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,376,346 (2,260,541)
9. GMO 1,993,491 (2,011,266)
10. Google 1,903,695 (1,840,869)

Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

* Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains
** Includes Tucows and Enom
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions and Register.com

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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1. How domain name stocks did on GoDaddy’s IPO day
2. Tucows sells some domain names to GoDaddy
3. GoDaddy reports earnings, Domain revenue tops $300 million

Three digit and NL domain sell for $100k+.

NameJet (which is now wholly owned by Web.com) had a bump in its monthly sales numbers thanks to selling two short domains last month. Overall, NameJet sold 63 domains for $2,000 or more in November, totaling $554,000.

Two domains sold for six figures including 864.com for $147,000 and 1M.com for $112,000. Two three-letter .com’s also traded hands: NZD.com for $25,000 and TIW.com for $20,000.

Here are some other notable sales followed by the full list:

Soundbites.com – $15,108 – a spectacular name for a spoken-word audio site, perhaps podcasting? Could also be used for new, politics and more.

MedicalExam.com – $7,877 – a nice exact match, although the plural might be better depending on your planned use.

Burbank.net – $4,000 – Domain financing company Lendvo appears to be the seller.

ChilliPepper.com $3,336 – Not necessarily a typo; the British spelling has two Ls.

DomainPrice 864.com147000 1m.com112000 nzd.com25000 tiw.com20000 soundbites.com15108 alertpay.com10600 qy.org10000 globalcare.com9300 charteryacht.com9171 jeny.com8500 medicalexam.com7877 jaden.com7144 cinematographer.com7100 saho.com7088 nebi.com6700 bccb.com6645 curative.com6500 greeninsurance.com5100 staunton.com5099 withyou.com5022 shortcode.com4905 dowork.com4489 gapo.com4000 burbank.net4000 millimeter.com3855 facecam.com3700 mindforce.com3600 handhelds.org3366 chillipepper.com3336 86858.com3109 usis.com3100 jepa.com3000 pacificpartners.com3000 attbi.com2956 pa1.com2900 sextoyshop.com2850 familymediation.com2810 fremontstreet.com2802 blackletter.com2801 presidentsclimatecommitment.org2801 ancore.com2755 claimswork.com2700 detoxing.com2655 plovdiv.net2603 braind.com2588 hotelsuk.com2507 foodnet.com2500 rearranged.com2500 casinotop.com2500 newoffice.com2488 nuworld.com2478 35z.com2443 yhdj.com2417 pitlane.com2365 ifirst.com2333 z9z.com2300 worldhelp.com2300 sufresh.com2210 gaige.com2210 timber.org2200 cbil.com2103 glrppr.org2100 pinless.com2020

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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Deal is a sign of the times in the expired domain business.

Web.com is now the sole owner of domain name auction site NameJet after acquiring Tucows’ (NASDAQ: TCX) interest in the business.

NameJet was created as a partnership between Enom and Network Solutions (now part of Web.com) in 2007 at a time when SnapNames was dominating the direct-transfer expired domain business. The deal meant that Network Solutions’ expired domain inventory would move to the new NameJet platform, delivering a blow to SnapNames. Oversee.net had just acquired SnapNames but knew about Network Solutions leaving the platform before completing the acquisition.

In 2014, Web.com acquired Snapnames from KeyDrive for $7.4 million. That meant that Web.com owned all of Snapnames and half of its competitor NameJet.

SnapNames and NameJet later combined forces on grabbing pending delete domains, which are domains that make it through the deletion cycle and are deleted by the registry.

Tucows acquired Enom last year and Enom’s half ownership in NameJet was a sort of “gift with purchase”. After the acquisition closed, Tucows shifted its expired domain name inventory from GoDaddy to NameJet, only to switch back to GoDaddy later in the year.

This was a big indication that GoDaddy was far better at monetizing Tucows’ expiring domain names than NameJet.

Today’s news makes sense. In fact, it probably makes sense to merge the SnapNames and NameJet platforms.

The big question is if Enom domains will remain on NameJet and for how long. This was obviously part of the negotiation and ultimate purchase price. If Enom leaves the platform for GoDaddy at some point in the future, it will further degrade NameJet’s role in the marketplace.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

Related posts:

1. Web.com paid $1.3 million for about 100 eNom registrars
2. Tucows shifts expired domain name inventory to NameJet
3. How NameJet can right the ship

Inside the world of .brand top level domain names.

Companies applied for many types of new top level domains in the current round of expansion. Hundreds of them were for so-called “.brand” domain names that match those of companies and their trademarks. On today’s show we talk with Tony Kirsch, who runs the .brand program for domain registry Neustar, to learn more about .brand domains and how they are playing out so far.

Also: A new TLD record, XFL Teams, DataRecovery.com, T-Mobile Money and more.

Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

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2. Panama, Sherpas and the Domain Market with Andrew Rosener – DNW Podcast #180
3. John Pollard: How to grow the usage of domain names – DNW Podcast #188