Posts filed under 'General'
Novara will be moving office on Friday the 4th of July. As such, please note that our phones will not be working that day and our text chat will not be online. If you have any urgent issues on the 4th, we will be contactable via the usual email addresses, support@novara.ie, info@novara.ie and sales@novara.ie.
Please note that replies to your cases/emails may take longer than usual on the day, we really appreciate your patience in this matter.
To ensure as little inconvenience as possible we would urge you to contact us on the Wednesday or Thursday before the move with any queries you may have.
This will in no way affect our technical services or servers as they are in our datacenter out in Blanchardstown and are not involved in the move.
June 24th, 2008
We posted last month about renewing .eu names here.
Unfortunately we’re still getting a lot of late renewals which can be a big problem compared to other domain types.
The reason is that .eu renewals are handled differently to other domains. With say a .com name, it will be suspended after the expiry date but as long as you renew within 30 days there is no extra cost.
With .eu names the name is suspended and also goes into whats called “Quarantine”. To renew the name, an extra e30 has to be paid on top of the renewal cost.
It’s important to keep an eye on your upcoming .eu renewals for this reason. You can check this from your customer manager system in the section entitled “services due for renewal in the next 60 days”
You can log into your customer manager here:
https://ncm.novarait.com
June 20th, 2008
We’ve changed the layout of our support site slightly to make it easier to navigate, the links all go to the same places but it should be more obvious where everything is now.
You can see the new page here
If you have any comments or feedback on the new layout, please let us know at info@novara.ie.
June 18th, 2008
Following the sale of Novara to Digiweb, we noted with interest last month that our largest competitor Hosting 365 sold their shared Hosting and domain registration division to Namesco, a UK based shared hosting company.
As a result, Register 365 who were previously the largest Irish owned hosting company in Ireland are now owned by an English company and support and customer care calls go to their English call centre.
This leaves Digiweb / Novara as the largest Irish owned and operated hosting provider in the Irish market.
Register 365 now expect:
“A transitory’ period of at least 2-3 months while everything settles down and the new team get to grips with everything.”
Which is understandable when you remove free phone support then decide to provide it again with all new staff.
Luckily we’ve managed to avoid similar disruption here by sticking with the same team and the same procedures.
We’re hoping that this commitment to a high and consistent level of service will help cement our position as the top Irish hosting provider in the market and will lead to us being the top provider over all.
June 12th, 2008
From the 1st of July our postal address will be changing as we move our office to Digiwebs datacentre and office space in Blanchardstown.
Our phone numbers etc will be staying the same and the same people will be answering the phones, just in a shiny new office.
No servers are being moved as part of this change, rest assured that when servers are being moved it will be flagged well in advance.
The new address is:
Hosting Department,
Digiweb Dublin Office,
College Business & Technology Park,
Blanchardstown,
Dublin 15
June 10th, 2008
The IEDR recently held a celebration to commemorate the 100,000th .ie name registered which was attended by Internet community leaders, dot.ie resellers, business and consumer groups. The Guest of honour was Minister Eamon Ryan, TD, and Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.
The Name in question was www.royal-hospital-kilmainham.ie. The hospital was given the name free of charge for 100 years to celebrate the milestone.
The name was registered through RedSky, a Novara domain reseller. Keelan Cunningham the MD of RedSky was in attendance along with Clidhna Costello, Novara’s General manager and Patrick Gahan from our Sales team.
Speaking at the event, David Curtin the IEDRs Chief executive thanked all of the IEDRs resellers and stated:
“We’re delighted to see that dot.ie remains the domain of choice for businesses and organisations in Ireland looking to maintain a safe presence online, where cyber crime and fraud are virtually non-existent. Breaking the 100,000th barrier is testament to the trusted nature and wide appeal of dot.ie. The benefits extend to consumers too, who can be assured that with dot.ie they know who they’re doing business with.”
From left to right,
David Curtin (IEDR), Clidhna Costello (Novara), Eamonn Ryan Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Catherine O’Byrne (Royal Hospital Kilmainham), Keelan Cunningham (Redsky) and Sean Scanlon (IEDR)
From Left to Right, Clidhna Costello (Novara), Keelan Cunningham (Redsky), Catherine O’Byrne (Royal Hospital Kilmainham), Patrick Gahan (Novara) and Souad Downes (IEDR)
June 3rd, 2008
In March of this year Hosting 365 dropped free phone support during business hours. This left many of their customers unimpressed to say the least. They’ve made a point of their phone support in the past but In their own words:
“Over the years, we’ve provided free phone telephone support during office hours. In that time we’ve learned through experience and feedback that telephone support is inefficient, expensive and not as effective as email or live chat at delivering problem resolution.”
Of course we’ve been saying the same thing for years about dealing with technical issues over the phone. All technical issues are processed via live chat and emails through our case ID system. And this system has worked brilliantly for us and for our customers who get their issues dealt with quickly and effectively.
However we haven’t found it necessary to charge premium rate prices for calls about billing or customer care issues. And while it makes sense to resolve technical issues through live chat and email, we do find that many issues to do with .ie registrations, transfers or even general questions can be solved with a quick phone call. So we’re keeping our lo-call number as it is.
One of them main questions we were asked by customers after the Digiweb buyout was will our support system be changing?
We feel we’ve struck the right balance in how we support our customers and feedback over the last few years has confirmed it. So we’re staying with the same systems and the same people. You won’t see us seesawing from offering to support everything over the phone to suddenly charging premium rates.
We know our system works and we’re keeping it.
May 28th, 2008
When you’re looking up if a name is available to register, be careful where you do it.
In the last few weeks a number of our customers have done searches with American registration companies to see if a name is available only to find it registered the next day. Luckily the names then became available in all cases after 5 days.
This is because of a loophole that allows registration companies to take a name and as long as they cancel within 5 days not have to pay for it. This leads to whats called “Front running” They buy the name temporarily in the hope that you will then buy it from them and not anyone else.
When searching to see if a name is available we recommend using either our www.register.ie site or www.whoislookup.ie
Icann the organisation who oversee domain names are currently reviewing this policy to try and close the loophole but until this happens its something to watch out for.
May 26th, 2008
Following his recent Sale of Novara to Digiweb, Dublin City Enterprise Board have an interesting profile on their Website of Novaras former MD and Owner Eoin Costello.
The Article covers from Eoins early life and work at the London stock exchange right up to the sale of the company.
It also describes the history between Novara and the Dublin city Enterprise board who were instrumental in making Novara the company it is today.
You can read the full article here
May 15th, 2008
We have been receiving a lot of requests for .eu renewals recently where they have gone past their expiry date.
Unlike other TLDs eg. .COM, .IE etc, .EU domain names need to be renewed before they lapse or retrieving them will cost an additional €30, along with the standard renewal fee. This fee has been added by the overall registrar of the .EU TLD and in turn Novara passes this fee directly to you, the customer. Please note that Novara has no control over this charge and that we are not adding further charges to cover our administration costs.
To avoid paying this additional fee, please be sure to renew you .EU domains before their expiry date.
If you have any queries on this, please contact our customer care team at info@novara.ie
May 13th, 2008
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