Bhutan Web Solutions

We are happy to announce that the Custom DNS Records section has been updated!
The new much improved version has wider functionality and offers for the first time the opportunity for CNAME, AAAA and TXT records to be configured within your DNS settings, as well as the possibility to add extra NS, MX or A records. Clients are able to choose themselves the number and the type of custom records they’d like to set to each host. The TTL value field is available for editing as well, in case there is such need.

For more information about the management and the configuration of your DNS settings, please, refer to the Help Section in the Show/Hide menu in the Custom DNS section of the Bhutan Web Hosting Control Panel, or contact our Support Department for assistance.

We would like to inform you that the RoundCube webmail software has been added to the Horde and Supreme Web Mail tools that are currently used for web-based e-mail management. Round Cube is pretty simple and reliable software that maintains the basic e-mail functions in combination with user-friendly interface. You will see the Round Cube on the webmail selection page that is accessible through the Bhutan web hosting Control Panel -> E-Mail Options -> Webmail.

If you experience any difficulties while using the new webmail software, please send us your feedback using the Open New Ticket link in the Help Center of the Control Panel.

you can also access all your emails using RoundCube Webmail at www.bhutanwebmail.com

The .DE TLD has been made available for registration and management in the Control Panel. This is the TLD for Germany and we believe that its implementation will meet the needs of our customer from Germany. It is worth mentioning that the registry of this domain, DENIC, has a few special requirements for the registration and management of .DE domain names and here you can learn about them.

WHOIS / Contact Information:In order to approve a registration request, the registry has set a requirement for street address or P.O. Box within Germany in the administrative contact section. To fulfill this requirement, an additional step has been added after the WHOIS information Please note that the .DE registry, DENIC may not approve the registration if the address is not correct.
Registration Period:The registration period varies between 1 to 10 years. Renewals for multiple years are possible as well.
Domain Renewal:.DE domain name can be renewed successfully up to 10 days before the expiration date. When less than 10 days are left to the domain’s expiration date, it gets a “Transit” status and the registry attempts to contact the registrant. If, after 4 weeks, there is no response, the domain is transferred to DENICdirect for further management and the registrant must contact then, in order to renew the domain name.
WHOIS / ID Protection:This service is not applicable for .DE domain names.
Registrar Change / Transfer:It is not possible to change the registrar of .DE domain names.

We believe that the information that we have provided would be sufficient to clarify the situation with the .DE domain names. In the Register / Transfer tab of the Domain Manager, there is a TLD Info page where one can find a detailed review of all TLDs on offer.

We are glad to inform you that the .COM.MX domain extension has just been made available in the Domain Manager of the Bhutan web hosting Control Panel. As you probably know, the .MX TLD is for Mexico but, unlike the most of the country domain names, there are no restrictions for nationality or residence in this country and anyone can order and use such domain names. However, there is a special requirement set by the nicMX registry that imposed an additional step to be added to the domain registration process. Here comes some more information regarding the features of the new extension:

Registration Period: .COM.MX domain names can be registered only for a 2-year period.
Domain Renewal: Domain renewal is possible for 1 year and must be ordered before the expiration date. If a domain name expires, it is removed from our account with our registrar, and becomes available for registration at least 16 days after the date of expiration.
Pre-Configuration: The step that follows the WHOIS information form requires the registrant to agree with the aforementioned domain renewal requirement.
WHOIS Management: Once a .COM.MX domain is registered, the registrant can modify the WHOIS only with a trouble ticket opened from the Help Center that is available in the Control Panel. The support team will forward the request to the attention of the domain registrar for approval and will inform the registrant whenever there is a resolution for approval or rejection, sent by the nicMX registry.
WHOIS / ID Protection: This service in not available for .COM.MX domain names.
Registrar Change / Transfer: It is possible only to transfer .COM.MX domain names away to another registrar, while transfers to us is not supported by our registrar.

The .DE top-level domain (TLD) will also be made available for registration and management soon. We will let you know as soon as this is done.

The .EU top-level domain (TLD) has been added for registration and management in the Control Panel of the Bhutan web hosting accounts. We believe that our customers from Europe will take advantage of this TLD when searching for appropriate domain names for their websites.

The .EU TLD is for the European Union and, thus, can be registered by any person or organization established within the European Union. Hereby follows some information about the management of .EU domain names:

Registrant Location: There is a requirement for the registrant (person or organization) to be established within the European Union.
Registration Period: The registration period for .EU domain names is 1 year, which applies also for their renewal.
Domain Renewal: Renewal requests will be accepted by the date of expiration (e.g. September 14th, 2008) or by the 20th of the month of expiration, in cases when the date of expiration is after that date (e.g. September 25th, 2008).
Example: If the name expires on Sept 14th, 2008, then a renewal request must be received by Sept 14th, 2008. If a name expires on September 25th, 2008, the renewal request must be received prior to September 20th, 2008.
Pre-Configuration: As there are requirements for the registrant’s location or origins, the domain registration interface will prompt the registrant to enter a valid address within the European Union. The .EU registry EURid will check the information and the registration request will be approved or rejected. Of course, the registrant will be notified via a trouble ticket in case there are any problems.
WHOIS Management: Once the domain has been registered with certain WHOIS information, the information can not be edited. However, minimal corrections are possible as an exception. Such requests must be sent to our support team via the ticketing system available in the Help Center of the Bhutan web hosting Control Panel. One should have in mind that the registrant’s personal or company name can not be modified because such changes are considered as ‘formal transfer’. In order to execute transfer of the domain ownership, the registrant must contact directly the EURid registry using the information on their webpage.
WHOIS / ID Protection: This service in not available for .EU domain names.
Registrar Change / Transfer: It is not possible to change the registrar of an .EU domain name.

In addition to .EU domain names, in the next couple of days the .DE TLD will be added to the domain extensions’ list as well. We will let you know as soon as it is done.

We are glad to inform you that the new TLD .ME.UK has been released and is now available for registration through the Bhutan Web Hosting Control Panel. The management policy of the .ME.UK top-level domain is relevant to the rest of the .UK TLDs that we offer for registration and comes with the same special features, the most important of which are:
- 2-year registration period
- renewal available again for a 2-year period
- renewal requests processed only during the 5-month period before the expiration date
- the WHOIS information cannot be altered directly from the Control Panel - the UK registry, Nominet, must be contacted by the domain name owner for WHOIS changes.

To learn more about the specific .UK domain features, please refer to the previous news that concerns the CO.UK and .ORG.UK domains’ release.

New TLDs coming soon - .EU and .DE!
The .EU and .DE top-level domains are to be available shortly, as well. They have the following specifications:

.EU - The .EU TLD is the unique TLD set for the European Union and, thus, can be registered by any person or organization established within the European Community. Registration of .EU domain names is possible for 1-year period only, and renewal must be ordered before the expiration date for the same period. Typically for the most of the TLDs (country code domain names), WHOIS / ID Protection is not supported.

.DE - This is the TLD for Germany - probably the chociest country TLD lately. However, there is a special requirement set by the registry of this domain, DENIC, referring to the registrant’s address information that needs to be presented at the time of registration. According to that requirement, it is obligatory, when entering the administrative contact information, a street address or P.O. Box within Germany to be presented, in order to gain approval of the registration. There is no WHOIS /ID Protection service available for .DE domain names and it is possible to choose a registration period from 1 to 10 years.

We are pleased to inform you that today we have made available for registration through the Bhutan Web Hosting Control Panel the .UK and .CA domain extensions (top-level-domains or TLDs). We know how desired they are and hope that these extensions will satisfy the needs of our clients from the United Kingdom and Canada.

Let’s present the new TLDs and have a look at their special requirements now.

.UK (.CO.UK and .ORG.UK) Domain Names
The .UK TLD stands for the United Kingdom. We’ve made available the .CO.UK and .ORG.UK SLDs (second-level-domains), which can be used for registration or transfer purposes. The domain names registered with these SLDs possess some special features that make their management different from that of .com, .net, etc. TLDs. The differences concern the registration period, the renewal policy and the WHOIS info management.

Registration period: The registration period for the .UK domains is 2 years.
Renewal policy: Domain renewals are possible for a 2-year period only. What’s more, renewal is only possible in cases when 5 months, or less, are left until the expiration date.
WHOIS management: Modification of the WHOIS info is not possible through the Control Panel. The UK registry Nominet must be contacted directly by the domain owner when the WHOIS info must be changed. The reason for this restriction is that there are certain fees that must be paid to Nominet and that such changes are considered as formal transfer.

.CA Domain Names
The Canadian registrar CIRA has some special requirements for the registrants and for the management of the WHOIS information.

Registrant requirements: .CA domain names can be registered by Canadian citizens, individuals having permanent residency in Canada and companies under the laws of Canada. Because of this requirement, additional contact details are required during the registration procedure itself and that is why we have made a separate page as a step of the domain registration process. This page allows you to choose the correct attribute from the list of options.

WHOIS management: The registrant cannot change the WHOIS in order to transfer ownership from one person or organization to another, but can change registrant’s address, phone number and other contact details. However, in order to modify this info, you will have to submit a trouble ticket to the Customer Support staff from the Help Center section in the Bhutan Web Hosting Control Panel.

It should be noted that both domains are transferable between different registrars and that no EPP authorization key is needed for that. Unfortunately, both of the registries do not support WHOIS / ID Protection for their domain names, which is characteristic for most of the “country domains”.

What should you expect after these TLDs?
We are now working on the implementation of .DE and .EU domain names. Our developers will do their best to complete these TLDs by the end of November.

We are happy to announce that new software, called .htaccess Generator, has been made available in the Bhutan Web Hosting Control Panel. Its purpose is to allow you to create many widely used .htaccess file features.

Where is the .htaccess Generator?
You can find the .htaccess Generator in the new Elefante Administration Tools section in the Web Tools menu. The new section includes also the Hotlink Protection and IP Blocking tools that have been taken from the Elefante Marketing Tools section. If you want to create .htaccess files you can also go to the desired location using the Control panel’s File Manager and click the .htaccess button that is available there.

Where is the .htaccess Generator located?
We have developed this tool taking into account your need to create .htaccess files and the fact that these files are sometimes not functioning properly due to incorrect parameters. The new generator will create the files properly so that there will be no need for you to contact our Technical Support team with regard to problems of such kind. Of course, we are always ready to help if problems with malfunctioning .htaccess files hosted on our servers appear.

What features have been made available in the .htaccess Generator?
The features have been grouped in the following six sections depending on their purpose:

• default index page
• additional MIME types
• authentication - allows IP and password authentication
• mod_rewrite - allows host authentication, wrong URLs redirection to another web server, language-based redirection and blocking sites by referrer
• custom error documents - allows the setting up of custom Error 400, 401, 403, 404 and 500 pages, as well as document redirection to a new URL
• other options - allows the enabling of Server Side Includes (SSI), hotlinking protection and PHP inclusion in HTML files

How can you apply the generated .htaccess code?
As soon as the form has been completed and submitted, the .htaccess code is generated. For your convenience, the code is being displayed in a text box so that you may choose whether to add it to an existing .htaccess file, or to have the file created in the selected location.

We trust you will like the new tool, as we are always happy to make our services easier for you to use.

A new feature has been made available in the Bhutan Web Hosting Control panel. It enables you to sign up quickly for a completely new hosting account when the current hosting account has insufficient resources or in case a new project is about to be started. That’s not all - a new interface has been developed for the signup process. It has the features of a Shopping Cart with its main advantage - allows management of the items that are being ordered without losing sight of them.

Let’s choose the Setup New Account link in the Bhutan Web Hosting control panel and take a short tour through the steps of the signup process using the new interface.

Step 1: Select a hosting plan
In the first step of the wizard you will get acquainted with the hosting plans that are currently on offer. To review the plan features and compare the hosting plans that are available for purchase, choose the Compare plans tab. To proceed to the next step, click the Order button that corresponds to the plan that suits your needs. Note that in the Cart table you can use the Change plan link to switch to another hosting plan at any time during the signup process.

Step 2: Select domain
In this step you must choose the domain name that you want to host in the new hosting account. You can register a domain name, or transfer an existing one, registered with another registrar. There is an option also to host your existing domain name without transferring it. Once you enter a domain name for registration / transfer and click the Add domain for hosting button, you must add to cart the domain that you’ve chosen in the results’ list. Of course, you can use the Change domain link to change the domain name whenever you want.

Step 3: Account info
Here we come to the place where you must submit the information needed in order to create the new hosting account. It is very important to enter the username of the new Hosting account and make sure that the contact e-mail address is correct because the new account information will be sent there. The same information will appear in the WHOIS of the domain that is ordered for registration or transfer.

Step 4: Select payment
Finally, we come to the last step of the wizard where you must select the preferred payment method (credit card or PayPal). Make your final decision whether you would like to have the web hosting account created and, if everything is in order, use the Next button to complete the signup process and submit the payment.

We aim at making our services a real pleasure for you. Our desire is to enable you to do more with fewer efforts. After the several Control panel upgrades that we have made recently, we are presenting to your attention now the new version of the Elefante FREE Scripts installer.

Considering your feedback, we’ve tried to improve this useful tool and the result is a more intuitive and less time-consuming scripts installer, which now offers you more scripts. We hope that you will like it. We’ll give you an idea of what you should expect to see:

New Interface
The new interface will allow having all the scripts displayed at once. One look at the Bhutan Web Hosting Control Panel will be sufficient to see the various categories and the corresponding scripts.

More information
Why going to each script’s page to see what its purpose is? Placing the mouse on the script’s name will show you a short description, which will give you an idea whether this is the software that you are looking for. If it isn’t - no problem, you will have some other scripts in the list to choose from.

One click for complete management
A single click on the chosen script will give you the complete information needed for its management: software name, version and description, the option of installing the given script as well as the current number of the installations with the corresponding administrator URL.

Script administration
The new administration panel is available in the Installed Applications section. A single click on the link in the Admin URL column will give you full information about the script - date of the installation, the database that was used, as well as the administrative login information.

Script versions
We will do our best to keep the versions of the scripts that will be available in the Elefante FREE Scripts installer up-to-date. Every time there is a newer version, we will make it available for installation. You should bear in mind also the following:

• It is your obligation to install new software versions and updates of the versions that you have already installed. Some programs don’t have updates and thus they may cause security issues. We are not responsible for any security issues that may arise as a result of non-updated versions of the scripts.
• We do not provide support for these scripts. Contact the development companies or check the support forums in case you experience any problems with the installed applications.

Thank you for being with us and for helping us improve our Bhutan Web Hosting services.