Create Your .Tel Domain Name — How to
A quick guide to getting your .tel domain name online.
If you read Reglike frequently then you by now know my opinion regarding .tel. But I know some people are getting into this, so I thought it would be worthwhile to register a .tel and share my experience.
I registered my last name, allemann.tel, at Moniker for $14.95. The registration process was a little different from other domains. I had to provide whois info for my .tel domain, and had a choice to keep it private.
Following completing my registration I received a standard Moniker receipt and nothing else. Apparently each registrar is supposed to tell you how to set up your .tel. I logged back into my Moniker account, searched for allemann.tel, and saw this message at the very bottom of the page:
Note: To manage your .TEL name(s), please login at https://telhosting.moniker.com with your Moniker credentials. Your username is “MONIKER” plus your account id. (For example: Account 1000 at Moniker will login with “MONIKER1000” username and your current Moniker password.)
I logged into the .tel system and it was fairly intuitive to “fill out” the profile. I only got stuck in a couple places. First was the phone number field. You have to enter your phone number in a specific format that includes the country code. Few people in the U.S. know what the U.S. country code is: 00. Telnic ought to include a link to a country code lookup or use the U.S. as an example.
Second, when completing your keyword and additional information, the save function isn’t as you’d expect. Here’s what it looks like:
Usually when you see a multi-tabbed pop up box like this, you can fill out more than one tab and click save once. That’s not the case here. You have to hit save on each tab, otherwise only the last tab you’re on will be saved and published.
Once you complete your .tel page it will go live within 15 minutes.
I ran into one other issue you ought to be aware of. Following making a number of updates I noticed they didn’t appear on the live domain. I e-mailed Telnic regarding it, and they sent back a screenshot of what they saw on my page. It was different from what I could see. I cleared my cache and tried a different browser with the same result. Then it hit me: I’m making changes in the DNS, and DNS changes can take a while to propagate. It’s like changing the nameservers on a traditional domain and having to wait a little while ahead of the site resolves to the fresh nameservers.
Now that I understand the .tel structure more I have formulated an opinion regarding the potential for search engine benefits of .tel domains. I’ll write regarding that in a later post.
