How To Do A Domain Name Registrar Transfer

Transferring your domain name from one registrar to another can be a giant pain in the rump. The process is a bit error prone and rather confusing, mainly because every domain name registrar has a different process and different interface. Plus, it is in each registrars interest to the make the Transfer Out process as cryptic and illogical as possible, since if it fails at any step along the way, they’ll retain ownership of the registry and possibly get another annual rebill out of you.

In this tutorial we will be moving domains…

From: Dotster.com (the Old Registrar, Current Registrar, or Outbound Registrar)
To: GoDaddy.com (the New Registrar, or Inbound Registrar)

Don’t get me wrong – both GoDaddy and Dotster are terrific Registrars. There’s no hard feelings here, I’m just consolidating accounts to GoDaddy to save a little money and take advantage of their TotalDNS service, which usually costs extra at other registrars.

Note that if you are transferring from or to different domain name registrars, your process will be similar overall, but the sample screenshots and link names will obviously be different for you.

Overview

The registrar transfer process hinges on a basic email verification process. In a nutshell, the new registrar sends Email #1 (containing a Transaction ID and a Security Code) to the administrative contact on file at the current registrar. You login to the current registrar and generate an Authorization Code, which is sent via Email #2 to the administrative contact on file. Assuming your email is on file as the administrative contact, you’ll receive these two emails within a few minutes. You then login to your account at the new registrar, and initiate the transfer process by entering the transfer Transaction ID & Security Code, and finally, the authorization Code from the current registrar. Once all 3 codes have been entered, your domain should be migrated to the new registrar within 72 hours.

The Process

Before you begin, login to your current registrar and update your domain name contacts. The critical contact record you will want to update is the administrative contact. Domain Registrar Transfers are accomplished by emailing the administrative contact email address. If you cannot access the email account listed and need to make updates, do this step 24 hours prior to initiating the registrar transfer.

1. At GoDaddy, purchase your domain name as a transfer registration. GoDaddy also has a nice interface to do bulk transfers, but – trust me on this – do domain transfers one at a time or it gets extremely confusing.
   
2. At GoDaddy, login to your account, and go to My Account -> Domains -> Pending Transfers
   
3. At GoDaddy, on the Pending Transfers page in the domain management area, click on the domain you want to work with. If you’re transferring multiple domains at once, you can see the status of each domain’s transfer process here.
   
4. At GoDaddy, click the Reinitiate button. This poorly-labeled button is the one that actually sends the Transaction ID and Security Code email to the Administrative Contact on file at the current registrar.
   
5. Now create a new browser tab and login to your domain management account at your current registrar. In my case this is Dotster.
6. At Dotster, unlock your domain for transfers at the current registrar. This is done on the main account list screen by checking the domain, picking ‘Unlock these domains - to allow transfers’ from the dropdown, and clicking the Manage Domains button.
   
7. Once Dotster says OK - Unlocked, go back to the domain management page and scroll to the bottom. Click the link that says ‘Request Authorization Code’
   
8. Next, check your email. If you’re not the administrative contact on the domain you’re trying to transfer, have the person who is forward you any emails they receive from GoDaddy or Dotster.
   
9. You will receive Email #1 from GoDaddy. It is from transfers@godaddy.com and lists the Domain Name, the Transaction ID and a Security Code.
   
10. You will receive Email #2 from Dotster. It is from auto@dotster.com. It contains your Domain Transfer Authorization Code.
    
11. Go Back to your GoDaddy account and prepare to initiate the transfer. You’ll need the Transaction ID, Security Code (from GoDaddy) and Authorization Code (from Dotster) handy.
12. At GoDaddy, check the checkbox next to the domain listed under Pending Transfers, and click the black Authorize button, and pick ‘Begin Transfer Authorization’ from the dropdown underneath it.
    
13. Enter the Transaction ID and Security Code (from Email #1) and click Next.
    
14. On the confirmation page with your domain name shown, pick the Authorize button and click Next.
    
15. On the Authorization page, paste the Authorization Code (from Email #2) and click Finish. Click OK to the final confirmation.
    
16. Now, just wait 72 hours and you should be good to go with your domains at GoDaddy. Note, you’ll receive at least one additional email (a transfer notification courtesy) from GoDaddy, during this process. You can ignore this email as it has no information pertinent to the actual process.
17. After a few days, log in to your GoDaddy account and re-visit the Pending Domain Transfers page. Once all the approval codes have been entered & registered (steps 1 - 15 above) you’ll need to finalize the transfer in the GoDaddy interface.

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A Search Engine Better Than Google? Maybe. WolframAlpha

So My MacBook Pro recently failed to wake up from sleep. I held the power on button for about 15 seconds, then let go. Nothing happened. I pressed the on button again and it booted right up again.

Next I see this:

Interested, I click Report to see what anonymous statistics it collected.

In addition to a ton of other stuff, it says:

System Uptime: 53599109180380 nanoseconds

Hmmm, I wonder… How long is that?

This is a perfect example of what Wolfram Alpha is perfect for.

Sure, you enter the search term like…

53599109180380 nanoseconds in hours

…into Google, to take advantage of a hidden feature called Google Calculator.

As exciting as it may seem to use Google for a calculator, wait until you check out Wolfram Alpha, a knowledge engine that uses natural language search to give you a wealth of information about your search term.

Here’s what you get when you search for 53599109180380 nanoseconds on WolframAlpha.com.

…plus a whole lot more interesting things, too, like the distance light can travel during that time.

If that doesn’t get you going, check out this Wolfram Alpha overview screencast.

Thanks to Alan for sharing this great link!

How to set the transparency of the Terminal window on Mac

Thanks to this post on MacObserver, which explains you can make your terminal window semi-transparent. It helps, for instance, if you’re trying to type in some sample commands from a web browser in the background.

1. Just go to Terminal -> Preferences -> Settings -> Window
2. Click the background color chip
3. Drag the opacity slider to the left.

Spaces Are Very Cool - Keyboard shortcuts to switch between running apps

If you have a Mac and aren’t using spaces for multi-tasking, you’re missing out on one of the great features of modern OSen. Encapsulation.

Even novice computer users understand that a computer can run more than one program at once. Using many apps simultaneously is called Multitasking. For example, you can edit your vector artwork in Illustrator, import the .ai file into Photoshop and apply effects to it, and use the PSD in an InDesign layout. You can run all 3 programs at once, and edits are instantly available in the other softwares when saving. As a web developer, I’m routinely running multiple browsers, an IDE (I use NetBeans and Dreamweaver), a text editor (on PC I use UltraEdit and TextMate on Mac), plus Photoshop if I have to work on any design elements.

Well, multi-tasking is one thing. But are you getting the most out of your 8GB of RAM and quad-core processor? Encapsulation, such as provided by Apple Spaces, takes it one step further and makes staying organized and more efficient easier than ever.

If you’ve ever spent any time on a laptop after using a dual screen setup, you’ve gotten really friendly with Alt-Tab (application switching) and Control-Tab (tab switching in one browser, or window switching in applications like Photoshop or Microsoft Word).

As a platform-agnostic PC-at-work / Mac-at-home kinda guy, I always think it’s great when Apple takes a killer feature from the PC world (the reverse applies, too, though less often) and makes it better. For the longest time on Mac, I yearned for an easy way to switch between applications like you could on a PC.

Keyboard Shortcuts to Switch Between Applications on Windows

To switch between running programs on Windows PC try these steps:

1. Hold down the Alt key,
2. and then press the Tab key,
3. and press the Tab key to cycle forward through running apps,
4. or hold the Shift key and press Tab to cycle backward,
5. and let go of the Alt key to use the selected App

Go ahead. Launch a few programs and practice. It sounds more complicated than it is and will become second nature to you in no time.

Anyway, at some point in the past, Apple adopted this feature for OS X… and made it even better.

Keyboard Shortcuts for switching between running applications on a Mac

On a Mac, to switch between applications, you need to:

1. Hold down the Command key,
2. and then press the Tab key,
3. and press the Tab key to cycle forward through running apps,
4. or hold the Shift key and press the Tab key to cycle backward,
5. and let go of the Command key to switch to the highlighted app,
6. Or, while still holding the Command key, hover your mouse over any app you want to switch to before letting go of the Command key.

Just by adding that single OR at the end, Apple made a fantastic productivity tool exceptional.

For the record, on a Mac, from the running app, you can choose [Application name Menu] -> Hide [Application name] or [Application name menu] -> Hide Others… which applies to the running applications. And you can also option-click on the finder (background application) when you have an application open in the foreground to instantly hide the foreground application. And of course there’s the yellow minimize icon that stuffs the app into a spring-loaded folder in the dock, but I digress.

Now, for the frosting on the cake.

What are Apple Spaces?

Imagine having 4 or 8 Macs instead of one. Would you be more productive if had 4 Macs and you could switch between them instantly? Apple Spaces lets you have the appearance of several virtual machines (all copies of your Mac). What’s cool about spaces is now you can run a couple of different browsers in one space, iTunes in another space, and your web development tools in a third space, and all your design apps in a fourth space. This keeps all those floating palettes and application windows more organized and is a great new way to gain even more productivity. By utilizing Spaces, you’ll spend less time application switching because each Space contains its own list of programs assigned to that space. And all those seconds can really add up, especially if you’re on deadline.

1. Enable Spaces by going to  -> System Preferences -> Exposé and Spaces
2. Then, to activate Spaces, press fn+F8.
3. With the Space selector activated, you can drag apps from one space to another,
4. and to switch between Spaces, you can use Ctrl-Right-Arrow and Ctrl-Left-Arrow to move between spaces,
5. or to instantly go to a space, hold Ctrl and type the number corresponding to the space, for example, Ctrl-2 instantly switches to the second space.

Give that a try, Mac guy. If you don’t think Spaces and application switching is useful, you’re wasting time and missing out on the full potential of a modern computer’s power.

References
macworld.com
discussions.apple.com

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Feel Good Gear - Feel Good. American Style.

I’m really proud to announce I finally got around to putting some of my Funny T-Shirt Designs out there.

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Ten Linux Commands Every Developer Should Know

Okay, Top Tens are another one of my favorite things to blog about. Normally, I write my own top ten, but today I wanted to link to some others similar posts, mainly because top tens are so common, and I know so little about Linux.

First up - Jason Gilmore. I don’t know if I agree with all of these; I think I use a few others more frequently, but this is a good collection.

Here are twenty great system monitoring commands.

And over here you can find, oddly enough, 57 linux tips for geeks, with a follow-up article containing dozens more linux tips.

How to view tar gzip contents without decompressing it

Tar files (.tar) are based on the old “tape archive” format. So if you think of how a program would write files to tape, one at a time, in order, .tar files do the same thing, so they don’t have a table of contents. However, there are some options that let you scan the .tar or other archive file and write the output to stdout or a file.

This forum has a pretty good discussion on this topic.

Yahoo! Answers Could Be So Much Better

I’ve managed to find several Yahoo! Answers pages lately that have ridiculous answers and are locked out of having better ones added.

I recently submitted this feedback:

The current policy of 4 days gives barely enough time to be indexed by other Search Engines (for instance, Google) and by then I can’t provide better answers. Why not let Questions be open to Answers until 15 days past the last answer (that is, until the topic has had no new answers posted for awhile) instead. What harm would that do but only help you get better free content at no cost.

Duh. Fail.

What is ORM and why should you use it?

I’ve been asking myself this question a bit more lately so I wanted to find some answers. Nowadays, ORM typically stands for Object Relational Mapping, and less commonly, Object Role Modeling, although the two concepts are related. Mainly I am curious about some of the new ORM implementations for Kohana 3, namely Sprig (based on Django) and Jelly.

The first page on this topic can be found over at Stack Overflow.

On the StackOverflow page is a link to this post by Glenn Block on the MSDN blog. I found it a bit surprising that this particular post hadn’t been voted on by any other Stack Overflow members as I found it an insightful and succinct explanation of why you might want to consider using ORM.

I noticed another topic that comes up in relation to ORM is DM, the Domain Model pattern, and DDD, Domain Driven Design. I thought this post entitled DDD - why bother? was an interesting take with a terrific example illustrating the benefits of an ORM system.

This post was inspired by Koes.