Notes from the Product Manager for March, 2014

March supposedly comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. I can’t confirm that, but I can tell you it’s still too cold at Hover HQ in Toronto, Canada, and winter may never end. Please send warm if you can spare some.

But enough complaining about the weather. Despite the never-ending winter, we managed to get a lot of stuff done this month.

More new TLDs

We added another few batches of new TLDs. These are all part of the long list of top-level domains that ICANN has approved. We’ll continue to add a half-dozen or more new extensions every week as more and more come online. You’ll see these new TLDs if you do a domain search, or you can have a look at the pricing page for a complete list of the extensions we offer.

Better domain search

Our domain search wasn’t doing a great job as we added more of these TLDs and so we undertook some work to improve performance there. We’re also working on a complete rethink of search and how we display search results. That’s a big pile of work and so while you might notice some improvements in the quality of our search results, you won’t notice a huge difference in the organization or display of the results just yet.

The Little Things™

• We added the ability to flip through multiple notification bar items if you have more than one showing. Before you had to dismiss one to see the next one. This allows you to leave one or more up there as a reminder if you want.
• We also made some changes to the registrant verification process to make that a bit better. We now tell you the reason that your information needs to be verified (like if an email bounced triggering the verification process) when we email you about it. And we prettied up the actual verification page, made it mobile-friendly and made the button you need to click much more evident.
• We also now show all the various contacts on the page when you view details of your domain and made it easier to edit them. That includes the admin, owner and tech contact, depending on the specific TLD and whether that TLD supports all those contact types.
• Last but not least, we made it easier for .EU domain owners to get the transfer AUTH code. Until now you had to call support to get that code because of how auth codes work with the EU registry. Now you can have the auth code sent to you via email. While we hope you don’t want to transfer your .EU domain to another provider, we also never want to stand in the way of your choice to do so.

There’s always more to come!