Need some comments & suggestions - co.za domain registrations

Hi Guys

About a month ago I launched a service, www.cozareg.com

The aim of the website was to offer people a service where they can register co.za domain names by simply completing an online form. No more text files necessary - also registrations can now be done by any person without technical knowledge.

Well, the website grew from a single domain registration page to a new member section where users can add domain names to their own control panel and manage their co.za domains online. Some features include:

- With a single click users will get a pre-populated form with all their domain's information and can simply make changes from there and submit it. No more text files.
- Users can now 'Push' a domain from one user's account to another.
- Pay for domains by clicking a link inside the control panel.
- Add / manage expiry dates for domain names.
- Once a registered member logs into his account, he or she can register new domains with a registration form already completed. (Unlike the front page of Cozareg.com)

I also added some additional tools, such as Pagerank lookups, search engine submission tool, etc.

We are still busy adding more automation to the site with expiry dates, etc., but I would appreciate any comments or suggestions you may have on where I can improve on the website.

Please note that we do not charge any fees for users making use of the site, nor do we get any money from Uniform. We just want to make domain registration easier and more affordable and accesible to all Internet users.

Thanks

registered.
looks good.

i still think that it would be good to have a paid option of "let cozareg handle this domain"
you then just set up a [email protected] address, which monitors for update/etc requests, accepts the token and forwards a confimation mail on to the registered user on success/failure.
a bulk registration form would be even better - enter your common ns and domain contact details, add a delimited list of domains and use the same procmail script for accept/reject mails from coza. then send a digest of results using a daily cron script as the confirmations trickle through.
of course payment renewals would need to be forwarded on to registered users, you're not going to be able to handle payment, but you could keep a record like you have of domains which need renewal in order for bulk users to keep track of costs for eft's.
that said, i'm not sure how registration & payment works for organisations with accounts with uniforum.

i'd also give users the ability to set up a few sets of admin contacts and ns sets so that they can either manually enter unique data, or just apply defaults.

Awesome! We've needed something like this for ages - the current www.co.za is embarrasingly primative. I'll become a user as soon as I have more co.za's to reg!

excellent idea however screams chancer @b me with a .com domain - personally I would have set it up on a .co.za - think local be local - I am local KWIM

Great website. co.za needs to get out of the ice age and revamp their registration system.

Haven't you run into problems scraping whois info etc? co.za normally blocks your ip after you look up a few domains.

Suggestion: Domain locking. So if a change request is sent through, an immediate "deny" is sent back (provided that cozareg is added as one of the admins). Much like what Hetzner does. This will stop idiots from trying to take over your sites (especially when the client never said anything about cancelling your services)

rorz0r said:

Haven't you run into problems scraping whois info etc? co.za normally blocks your ip after you look up a few domains.

Click to expand...

It's quite easy to get past. Caching the information for 24 hours means you can serve up subsequent queries from the database. Also, if the server he's hosting on has more than 1 IP address (which I assume it has), he can use any of those IP address (doesn't have to be linked to his specific hosting account) in the cURL call he does and not reach the limit imposed by co.za. Those including checking with the whois server first to see if it's registered won't have an affect where co.za have to block your IP address for farming

murraybiscuit said:

registered.
looks good.

i still think that it would be good to have a paid option of "let cozareg handle this domain"
you then just set up a [email protected] address, which monitors for update/etc requests, accepts the token and forwards a confimation mail on to the registered user on success/failure.
a bulk registration form would be even better - enter your common ns and domain contact details, add a delimited list of domains and use the same procmail script for accept/reject mails from coza. then send a digest of results using a daily cron script as the confirmations trickle through.
of course payment renewals would need to be forwarded on to registered users, you're not going to be able to handle payment, but you could keep a record like you have of domains which need renewal in order for bulk users to keep track of costs for eft's.
that said, i'm not sure how registration & payment works for organisations with accounts with uniforum.

i'd also give users the ability to set up a few sets of admin contacts and ns sets so that they can either manually enter unique data, or just apply defaults.

Click to expand...

To add onto this, a separate area for your to manage your DNS servers. So when you change/save those DNS servers in that area, any domain linked to it would automatically send through an update request

Good idea, useful site. The text emails don't really bother me to be honest, but I'll prob register with you guys anyway because I can't deny it would make life a bit easier

EDIT: It's actually an incredibly simple concept at it's core - collect the appropriate data and generate an email to uniforum. I can't believe no one decided to do this before now! Nice idea dude

Very cool, well done and thank you. Finally!

Hi guys

Thanks for your comments and suggestions, I really appreciate it.

Will look at some of the suggestions as I will start on the next phase of the development!

Great site - Very helpful

Small comment - at the end of the Registration page you make a passing comment about reading the Terms and Conditions of Uniform. I would either link directly to the ToC in this comment or display it partially above the registration form.

Also, you have prepended a * before each text field (E.g. *Registrant Street Address) but there is no reference to the meaning of this *. If it does infact, as expected, mean mandatory - rather state that all fields are mandatory instead of spamming *s.

Otherwise looks great - well done.