The Domains section of the Control Panel allows you to check the availability of a domain name, and if the name is available, allows you to register that name. In order to provide you with the largest selection of names from which to choose, the search results include suggestions for similar, available names (Suggested Domains) as well as domain names that are already taken, but whose owners are willing to sell them for a price; these are referred to as Premium Domains. The Premium Domains list also indicates the purchase price of each of the available Premium domain names.

Premium domains that are purchased cannot be transferred away for 60 days.

To register a domain

1. In the Domains section of the Control Panel, click the plus sign (+).

2. In the Search for a domain or keywords text field, enter all or part of the domain name for which you want to search and then click Search.

You can enter one or more words, and you can use wildcard characters to represent part of the name.

If you search for the exact domain name that you want, including the TLD extension (such as example.com), and the name is available, the registration form appears.

If the exact name is not available or if you entered anything other than a complete domain name, you will see a list of related, available domain names including Premium Domains.

3. If the returned list includes a name that you want, click Register Now to begin the registration process for the name.

4. Complete the fields on the registration form, and then click Submit Registration or Save as Draft.

Registrant Info

• Username—Enter the registrant's name.
• Password—Enter a password for the registrant.
• Confirm Password—Enter the registrant's password again for confirmation. This field is displayed if Mask Password is checked.
• Mask Password—Click to put a checkmark in this box if you want the password to be hidden, and a number of dots displayed instead. If you enable this feature, the Confirm Password field is displayed.
• Affiliate ID—If you have your own Reseller or affiliate base, you can use this optional field to track this business. If you don't have a Reseller or affiliate business model or you don't want to track this information, you can ignore this field.

You can pre-fill the fields on the registration form with information from a previously registered domain

To pre-fill the registration fields

1. Click Associate with existing user
   The Registrant Search box appears.
2. Enter all or part of the domain name for which you want to search, and click Search.
   You can use wildcard characters to represent part of the name.
   If the search field contains the @ symbol, the system searches for matching email addresses; otherwise, it searches for domain names.
3. From the results list, click a domain name to pre-fill the fields with the information associated with that domain.
   Note: When you pre-fill the registration fields in this way, you can edit the information in any of the fields except for the Registrant password and the Administrator email address.

Domain Settings

This section allows you to set the domain’s registration period and security settings. Click the associated checkboxes to select or deselect settings. If a TLD does not support a feature, you will not see the option.

• Registration Period—From the drop-down box, choose the registration term for the domain that you selected. You can register most domains for up to 10 years.
• Auto Renew—When auto renew is enabled, the domain is automatically renewed 30 days before the domain expiration date (this is true for most TLDs, but to check specific TLDs, refer to the TLD reference chart on the OpenSRS website). The Auto Renew feature is an excellent safety net for domains that must not be allowed to expire. All domain names that have the Auto Renew feature enabled are automatically renewed 30 days before the domain expiration date. If you enable the Auto Renew feature when there are fewer than 30 days until the domain's expiration date, you should make sure that you enable it within 2 days of the expiration date, depending on when the Auto Renew job processes the renewal. If a domain is close to the expiration date when you want to enable the Auto Renew feature, be aware that it may not be auto renewed the very next day. Therefore, we recommend that you renew the domain manually in case the Auto Renew job runs late. The Auto Renew function will see that a manual renewal has been performed and won’t apply an extra renewal year.
  Note: Be sure to maintain a sufficient balance in your account that is capable of sustaining auto-renewals; an auto-renewal transaction will not succeed if there are not sufficient funds in your Reseller account.
• Contact Privacy—Contact Privacy hides the identity of a Registrant when a user does a WHOIS lookup on that Registrant’s domain. The benefit of enabling Contact Privacy is that the registrant’s identity, including home address, phone number, and email address, is shielded from spammers, identity thieves, scammers, and other undesirables. When registrants enable the Contact Privacy service, masked WHOIS contact information appears in the public WHOIS database. If someone tries to contact an email address associated with a domain that is protected by Contact Privacy, they receive an autoresponder message instructing them to visit contactprivacy.com if they want to reach the registrant. If there is a cost for Contact Privacy, it is displayed here.
  Note: This option is displayed only if Contact Privacy is offered for the TLD that you are registering.
• Lock Domain—Domain locking prohibits certain changes to a domain such as transfers and DNS modifications. This is a security feature that has been designed to ensure that registrants have full control over the modifications made to their domain. It helps you, the Reseller, to secure your clients' domains against slamming, hijacking or other forms of 'domain transfers' that have NOT been properly authorized by the registrant. Domain locking prevents Registrar transfers away from OpenSRS, RSP2RSP transfers to another OpenSRS Reseller, and DNS Management. If a registrant wants to perform any of these actions for a locked name, the name must first be unlocked.
  Note: Domain locking does NOT prevent contact management.

Contact Information

Enter or edit the contact details for the Owner, Administrator, Billing, and Technical contacts for the domain.

Note: Depending on the TLD that you are registering, you may not see all of these contact types.

• Owner—The owner of the domain.
• Administrator—The administrative contact for the domain.
• Billing—The person who is responsible for all billing and financial issues for the domain.
• Technical—The person who is responsible for any technical issues for the domain.

The following fields are mandatory: First Name, Last Name, Organization Name, Address1, City, Country, State/Province, Zip/Postal Code, Phone, and Email.

Important: Make sure that the postal/zip codes and phone numbers are formatted correctly for that country.

Nameservers

This section allows you to specify the nameservers that the domain will use, and also allows you to enable the Parked Pages Program. Every domain name must have at least two nameservers.

In the Nameserver Provider section, choose one of the following:

• Use Our Nameservers—Domain is assigned the default OpenSRS nameservers; this is required if you want to take advantage of DNS/Zone features.
• Park with Ads—Domain displays sponsored ads and is assigned the default parking nameservers.
• Use Your Own Nameservers—Specify your own nameservers, minimum two required. If you choose this option, DNS/zone information will not be active, which means that any existing forwarding and DNS options will be disabled.

DNS

To apply a DNS template to the domain, from the DNS Template drop-down list, choose the template that you want to use.

When you register a new domain, you can enable DNS using the default template or a custom template that contains zone information.

To apply the default DNS template

1. In the Nameservers section of the domain registration form, click the radio button beside Use Our Nameservers.
2. In the DNS section, from the DNS Template drop-down list, choose no template to use the default template.
   When the domain is registered, DNS is enabled, but the zones are not yet defined. You will have to specify the zone information later.

To apply a custom DNS template

1. In the Nameservers section of the domain registration form, click the radio button beside Use Our Nameservers.
2. In the DNS section, from the DNS Template drop-down list, choose the template you want to use.
   DNS is enabled, and the zone information from the template is assigned to the domain.

For more information on DNS Templates, see the article "Creating or editing a DNS template".

You can filter the type of domains that are returned when you do a domain search in the Control Panel, based on the values in one or more of the columns, for example, TLD, Status, and Settings.

To filter domain search results

1. In the Domains section of the Control Panel, click Advanced Filtering to display the search criteria.
2. Click the associated checkboxes to select or deselect the criteria that you want to include in your search. When a box contains a checkmark, any domains that meet that criteria will be displayed in the search results.

For gTLD, ccTLD, Verification Status, and Status, you can click All to select all the listed criteria or click None to deselect all the listed criteria. By default, all statuses are displayed except for Expired (Redemption) and all of the Archived statuses (Cancelled, Declined, Deleted, Transfer In Cancelled, and Transferred Away).

Important: If you deselect all statuses, no domains will be displayed.

Filtering by TLD

To restrict your search to particular TLDs, in the gTLD and ccTLD sections click the associated checkboxes to select or deselect the domain extensions that you want in the displayed list. When a box is checked, only the domains that match the search criteria for the selected TLDs are displayed in the search results.

Filtering by Verification Status

As part of a new ICANN process, all registrants are required to verify the contact information that they used to register generic top-level domains. To restrict your search to a particular verification status, click the associated checkboxes to select or deselect the statuses that you want in the displayed list.

• Unverified—The verification process has not been initiated.
• Pending—The verification process has been initiated, and the validation email will be sent.
• Verifying—The verification process has been initiated and is waiting for registrant response.
• Verified—The registrant has been verified.
• Suspended—The registrant has failed verification and the domain has been suspended.
• Manual Review—The registrant data has been submitted and is being validated manually by the Tucows Compliance team

Filtering by Status

To restrict your search to a particular status, click the associated checkboxes to select or deselect the statuses that you want in the displayed list. When a box is checked, only the domains that have the selected statuses are displayed in the search results.

• Active—Domain registration is complete.
• Draft—Domain registration was saved as draft but has not been submitted for processing.
• Pending—An error occurred during processing that requires attention, for example, insufficient funds in Reseller account. Pending means that some action is required, such as an approval.
  Domains that have been in a pending state for more than 30 days, with 30 days of inactivity, are automatically cancelled.
• Waiting—The registration is waiting for some external process to occur; usually applies to asynchronous registrations.
• Renewal Pending—The renewal is waiting for some external process to occur; usually applies to renewals through asynchronous registries.
• Renewal Waiting—The registration is waiting for some external process to occur; usually applies to renewals through asynchronous registries.
• Transfer In Requires Admin Action—The transfer in request is awaiting confirmation from the Admin contact.
• Transfer In Requires Owner Action—Domain transferred from another registrar to OpenSRS, waiting for transfer to be approved or declined by the Administrative contact.
• Transfer In Requires Registry Action—Domain transferred from another registrar to OpenSRS, waiting for transfer to be approved by the applicable TLD registry.
• Landrush Registration Pending—Domain registration submitted during landrush period is waiting for approval from Registry.
• Sunrise Registration Pending—Domain registration submitted during sunrise period is waiting for approval from Registry.
• In Expiration Grace Period—Domain name has expired, but is in Registry defined grace period; domain can be renewed by registrant during this period.
• Transferred Away Pending—Domain transfer from OpenSRS to another registrar is in process.
• Transfer Away Expired—The
• Expired (Redemption)—Domain name has expired and was not renewed during redemption period.
• Cancelled—Domain registration was cancelled.
• Declined—The registration, renewal or transfer was declined by the registry.

Filtering by date

To restrict your search according to the dates that domains were created or will expire, in the Created or Expires section, click the associated field, and use the From and To calendars to choose a date range. Alternatively, you can choose a time period from the Show Everything drop-down box.

Tip: You can double-click the year that is displayed in the pop-up calendar to display months, and you can then click to jump to a particular month. In addition, you can double-click the name of the month that is displayed at the top of the pop-up calendar to display years, and you can then click to jump to that year and then select a month.

Filtering by settings

To restrict your search to domains that have a particular setting enabled, in the Settings section, click the associated checkboxes under Storefront Managed, Contact Privacy, Domain Locked, Let Expire, Domain Parked, and Auto Renew. If you don't want to restrict your search based on a particular setting, select both On and Off (this is the default).

• Storefront Managed—Domain is managed through Storefront.
• Contact Privacy—Whois lookup does not display domain owner's identity (address, phone number, email address).
• Domain Locked—Domain is locked so that transfers and DNS modifications cannot be made until the domain is unlocked.
• Let Expire—Domain expires at the end of the registration period.
  Note: This setting is applied only if you set the domain to Expire with notifications.
• Domain Parked—Domain displays a customized page containing contextual ads that earn revenue for the registrant.
• Auto Renew—Domain automatically renews 30 days before the expiration date.

The Parked Pages Program is an excellent way for you to generate revenue from domains that are currently not in use. When the Parked Pages Program is implemented, a customized page containing contextual ads is displayed on the domain. The ads generate revenue whenever a visitor clicks on one of the links, and that revenue is shared between OpenSRS and you, the Reseller. Ad revenue is added to your Reseller account after the end of each month.

Even though the domain displays content that is not created by the registrant, the domain still belongs to the registrant, and if a WHOIS lookup is done on that domain, the registrant's information is displayed, unless they have enabled Contact Privacy.

Note: Changes to the parked pages state for .CA domains may take up to 48 hours to take effect. This is due to the Registry’s (CIRA) zone-file publication schedule.

To maximize the revenue that you earn from the Parked Pages Program, you can configure your account profile so that whenever you register a new domain, by default, the nameservers are set to the OpenSRS Parked Pages nameservers.

To enable Parked Pages for all new registrations, by default

1. In the Domains section of the Control Panel, choose Domain Settings from the Actions drop-down list.
2. In the Default Nameservers Settings section, click Edit.
3. Under Nameserver Provider, click the button to select Park with Ads, and then click Save.

When you enable default Parked Pages, all new registrations will use the Parked Pages nameservers; however, you can override this setting for specific domains, either at the time of registration or by changing the Parked Pages setting after the domain is registered.

You can opt out of the Parked Pages Program for one or more specific domains; however, if you opt out of the Parked Pages Program, you will not be able to generate parking revenue from those domains.

If registrants want to launch their own website, you can disable the Parked Pages Program for their domains. When you do, the DNS for the domains automatically reverts back to the DNS you specified when you registered the domains.

To opt out of the Parked Pages Program for a specific domain

1. In the Domains section of the Control Panel, enter all or part of the domain name for which you want to search, and then click Search.
You can use wildcard characters to represent part of the name.

2. Click the domain name.

3. In the Nameservers section, click Edit.

4. Under Nameserver Provider, click the associated button to select one of the following:

• Use Our Nameservers—The domain is assigned the default OpenSRS nameservers.
• Use Your Own Nameservers—Specify your own nameservers, minimum two required.

5. Click Save.

Important: Remember, if you opt out of the Parked Pages Program for one or more domains, you will not be able to generate parking revenue from those domains.

The Whois Data Reminder Policy is an ICANN requirement.

The policy states that all Registrars must, at least once a year, present each of their Registrants with that Registrant’s current Whois information.

The WDRP message is sent to each Registrant 120 days before their domain’s expiry date. If a domain is registered for more than one year, the WDRP message is sent, each year, 120 days before the anniversary date of the domain’s registration. The WDRP message includes a link to a page where Registrants can then update their Whois information, if required.

If a Registrant fails to or opts not to respond, their current Whois information is assumed to be correct.