Filling the Void with DNZoom: Security, Portfolio Management, and New Beginnings
Four years ago when I started domaining I had very little cash. During my initial domaining stages, registrations prices were a huge concern for me. Every time I registered a domain I would look for specials, coupons, and discounts. I knew if I could save a few dollars at a certain registrar that I could register more domains and ultimately make more money by investing those savings.
What I didn’t realize is that this strategy would also cause me to do a lot more work with my portfolio. After about six months of registering, buying, and selling domains, I had registrar accounts everywhere.
My portfolio started out with Tucows (because of price) and GoDaddy (because of coupons). At that point I only had a Sedo account so it was not so confusing when it came to parking. I then realized that some parking providers paid better with certain types of domains so I signed up at a number of companies. Ultimately, I ended up with a Fabulous.com, Parked.com, Sedo.com, DomainSponsor.com, and NameDrive.com account.
My thriftiness, and wanting to maximize my meager earnings, meant that I had to do a lot of work and be diligent about managing my domains.
To get a grip on my portfolio, I started a spreadsheet. I would update the columns with the domains and how much they were purchased for, along with the parking company where they resided. After about 3 months of constantly forgetting to update my spreadsheet, I eventually gave up.
From then on I made it a point to check every single email I received from my domain service providers and then to filter those emails into different folders. These had to be checked and attended to every single night. The problem with this was that it wasn’t very efficient as sometimes an email never showed up, or my email box would fill up, or I flat out wouldn’t see the email. In a worst case scenario, a domain would expire.
Later, there were a few applications that came out which did assist in portfolio management. But functionality was extremely limited, and of the few features that were supported with API connections, few of them had the DNS changes or other API calls that were desperately needed for core functionality.
The other applications on the market assumed I had all my domains at one registrar, and even those didn’t work with parking companies. For me, that wasn’t a solution either.
Building DNZoom
Like most things, DNZoom was built out of necessity. After the troubles I experienced with my own domains and the domains that I had to manage at ModernBill.com (former job), we knew there had to be a better way to manage domains.
We needed a way to store passwords in a central location while preserving security, in addition to being able to pull up statistics. We needed a search and sort feature, API based DNS changes, parking provider domain additions, and registration abilities. We knew what we needed, because it was something that we didn’t have. So, like true software entrepreneurs, we built it.
During our development phase we decided to offer this product to the public, so from the very beginning we centered DNZoom tightly around security. We knew that DNZoom would come under scrutiny because of the available (but not required) password storing feature. From day one we put security first. After all, not only were my clients’ domains going to be in DNZoom, MY domains were going to be in DNZoom. We were not willing to risk our assets or our clients’ assets so we came up with a platform that would be as secure as humanly possible.
For security we partitioned the backend database servers off from the web facing servers so it would be virtually impossible to get into it. The web-facing servers were completely locked down via IP blocking and firewalls. We then employed a security guru to write most of the code that would go into DNZoom so we could rest assured that queries would be sanitized properly. We also instituted features so domain owners wouldn’t be required to even enter their registrar credentials into DNZoom if they had reservations about it.
At one point, our security features went into such great detail that we would lock ourselves out of the system. After a lengthy rewrite we were able to juggle usability with security, and that in itself was no small feat.
What was amazing is that this had never been attempted before on a grand scale. Some parking companies and some registrars already had the ability in their API’s for all of this, yet, we were the first company to intensely specialize in this field in a truly agnostic fashion.
Now and in the future….
There are a lot of great results originating from the strides we have taken and continue to take, that will not only benefit us, but other companies as well.
Every day, more and more registrars and parking companies are building out their APIs so we can take advantage of automation. But keep in mind, not only can we take advantage of the automation, others can too.
Once this technology is put into place it can then become standardized, and from there it can be built upon. In the future, more companies like ours will spring up that use APIs, and they will be able to do all sorts of things. Massive reporting and number crunching, up-to-the-minute reports, and domain protection/theft alerts all can be automated with technology. Who knows? APIs may even assist in achieving transparency. One thing I know for sure is that DNZoom By Bido plans on taking on a lot of these tasks and we will continue to push for new technology.
As some of you already know, Moniker.com, Fabulous.com, RevenueDirect.com and a handful of others have just recently built their APIs. These companies all have foresight and see the need for automation. Each of these companies knows and understands that this need is going to be even greater in the future.
Remember, our industry and our livelihoods are built on technology. We have no choice but to break down walls and build bridges to close the gap. Moving forward, DNZoom By Bido will continue to push for new standards. With this move, not only do we hope to help you with portfolio management, but help others with the new technology derived from it.
Source: Posted on TheConceptualist by Sahar Sahid – Reprinted with permission – March 28, 2008