Registrars for European domain names

[MrGettingRatherFrustrated]

Enom/OpenSRS seem to have a few European country domain extensions missing from their portfolios - listed below, can anyone recommended one of the other supported registrars that a)  doesn't require purchasing an expensive "membership" and doesn't have extortionate pricing that supports these extensions.

I'd just like to be able to offer a complete service to my customers

ad - Andorra
al - Albania
az - Azerbaijan
ba - Bosnia-Herzegovina
bg - Bulgaria
by - Belarus
cy - Cyprus
ee - Estonia
ga - Georgia
ie - Ireland
kz - Kazakhstan
mc - Monaco
mk - Macedonia
mt - Malta
rs - Serbia
si - Slovenia
sk - Slovakia
tr - Turkey

[brian!]

17 hours ago, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

I'd just like to be able to offer a complete service to my customers

generally, this will be a waste of time - it's unlikely that you'll ever be asked to register any of those ccTLDs... some of them might have residency requires (so therefore requiring additional domain fields to be added - WHMCS won't have many by default); most probably don't even have a workable whois server (so WHMCS couldn't search for them without additional coding).

Hexonet would be an option for Irish domains.

the point being that you (anyone doing this) needs to understand what they're selling and if/how it works in WHMCS - for example...

• I can go to your site and order google.es, madrid.es without an issue.... the only problem being they're already registered.
• I can search for any .my domain you can think of, and it won't be shown as available - even if it is.
• similarly for firm.in domains... I could go on with other examples.

although users can import hundreds of TLDs from a registrar, that doesn't mean that WHMCS supports them out of the box.

[MrGettingRatherFrustrated]

Thanks once more brian!.

This does feel like a bit of minefield, I've applied to red.es to allow my IP to their whois - now that I know I need to

How do I find out which extensions have issues/restrictions like this - .es is "meant" to be supported out of the box although it appears to be pointing at the wrong servers anyway in the json file anyway (I am also aware of the .nl limits you highlighted to me previously which I haven't followed up on yet.) - .es is also enabled through the Enom sync again with no indication of anything being required

I cant see anything in the WHMCS documentation which identifies this issue although I may be looking in the wrong place - I feel another couple of bug reports coming on! lol

[brian!]

20 hours ago, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

This does feel like a bit of minefield, I've applied to red.es to allow my IP to their whois - now that I know I need to

a good first step..

20 hours ago, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

How do I find out which extensions have issues/restrictions like this

from experience. 🙂

the awkward ones are primarily the ccTLDs, they can have very particular restrictions and often (especially when they're smaller countries) will not have an active whois... then you have to worry about the gTLDs that sell premium domains and whether your registrar API can return the price.... you can't get premium pricing from whois.

20 hours ago, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

.es is "meant" to be supported out of the box although it appears to be pointing at the wrong servers anyway in the json file anyway

meant to be lol... yeah they keep quiet about it not working don't they... I brought that up many times years ago, they (including Matt) *know* it doesn't work.... they *know* that users will be blindly using it expecting it to work, but it's not going to throw any errors, so unless a client points out the false results, the poor WHMCS owner isn't going to know... potential lost sales and clients, but nevermind, as long as the latest MarketConnect product is working fine and bringing in revenue to WHMCS, that's the more important thing. 🙄

there are still lots of wrong entries in there... often the ones that now use private whois servers.... and then we get started on the omissions - oh boy.

21 hours ago, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

(I am also aware of the .nl limits you highlighted to me previously which I haven't followed up on yet.) - .es is also enabled through the Enom sync again with no indication of anything being required

using a free eNom account from WHMCS ? another moneyspinner for them.

I don't know if eNom sell .es domains... if they do, I would expect their API to handle the search (if using them or NS as a lookup provider)... if they don't, then it will fall back to using standard whois.. and you know that's not working.

21 hours ago, MrGettingRatherFrustrated said:

I cant see anything in the WHMCS documentation which identifies this issue although I may be looking in the wrong place - I feel another couple of bug reports coming on! lol

if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? if an issue isn't highlighted in the docs, then does the problem even exist ??... it's philosophical Monday everyone. 🙂

as a basic rule, if you're using NS/LUP. then it should use their API to search for results (and be faster), for any particular TLD that it doesn't resell a TLD, then it will fall back to using standard whois.

so from your point of view, see if eNom sell a TLD (probably applies to most gTLDs) and if they don't, check that there is an entry in the dist.whois.json file for that TLD... if not, then find out what it is and add it to a custom whois.json file outlined in the docs.