Spring is in the air

It’s March and that fresh, clean Spring air is coaxing the buds on the trees to open up and cover the branches with soft, green spring leaves. That Spring air seems to have even blown through this month’s newsletter. At least, a crop of fresh, green updates, promos, and new releases are budding.

Premium .paris domains, long held dormant like winter plants, are now being released, we’re looking at new TLDs being added by ICANN to the root zone, Gandi is attending and hosting a flurry of events, you can upgrade your Simple Hosting instance to PHP 5.6 with one click and witness the lifecycle of a domain in one glance. We’ve also go some great new releases and promos this month, so don’t miss those calendars either.

1. Premium .paris domains released
A whole bunch of premium domains for generic terms in .paris like café.paris, brunch.paris or antiquites.paris that, starting 10 March will become available at the registrar of your choice. These domains are pure gold, and being premium domains they can come at a steep price—between €475.00 and €4,210.00 before tax. For more information, check out our post here: www.gandi.net/news/en/2016-03-02/7196-ah_.paris_in_the_spring_premium_domains_released/

2. Recently-Added TLDs to the Root
We took a look at the TLDs coming down the line that were just added to ICANN in the past month. We won’t necessary end up offering all of them, but we thought you’d at least like to know. Have a look at what we found here: www.gandi.net/news/en/2016-03-01/7124-recently-added_tlds_march_2016/

3. Gandi Events
This month we attended, are attending and even hosted a number of events, whether in Paris, San Francisco, Luxembourg, Taipei or beyond. You can read about what we saw, who we met, and what we learned in this post: www.gandi.net/news/en/2016-03-10/7259-gandi_events_march_2016/

4. Update: One-click upgrade to PHP 5.6
A one-click upgrade to PHP 5.6 for Simple Hosting instances is now available in Beta.
All you need to do is go to your instance’s control panel and click on the “Update” link.
This operation will move everything over to PHP 5.6 automatically, though you might experience some issues during the next few days as we still consider the feature to be in Beta. We also highly suggest checking our guide to learn more about the differences between versions and about the issues you might encounter, since you won't be able to rollback this update. Users of other types of PHP instances, such as PostgreSQL or MongoDB databases, unfortunately will still have to upgrade manually. Our documentation also includes instructions and examples to help with manually migrating your instances.
For more information, check out our post here: www.gandi.net/news/en/2016-03-08/7214-one-click_update_to_php_5.6_available_on_simple_hosting/

5. In-depth: The Lifecycle of a Domain
We’re also starting a new series of infographics exploring the mysterious recesses of domain name registration, hosting, the Internet as a whole. This month, we are delving into the life and death of a domain name: from the moment it is first registered and blinks into existence, to its
renewal, and then to the mysterious afterlife that lies beyond expiration. A picture is worth a thousand words, so before we spend too many of those words here, we should just recommend that you check out our visualization here: www.gandi.net/news/en/2016-03-04/7226-the_lifecycle_of_a_domain/

6. TLD release Calendar
Here's a look at TLD releases at Gandi for the month of March 2016. HTML version available here:
www.gandi.net/news/en/2016-03-08/7262-new_tlds_calendar_march_2016/
  • Thursday March 3: .bet (GoLive)
  • Monday March 7: .佛山 (.xn--1qqw23a // Foshan GeoTLD) (GoLive)
  • Tuesday March 8: .bible (GoLive)
  • Thursday March 10: .vip (Sunrise)
  • Monday March 21: .barcelona (GoLive)
Stay tuned for updates and, of course, for next month's releases.

7. Promo Roundup
We've got a healthy early spring harvest of promotions this March. Take a look below (HTML version available here: www.gandi.net/news/en/2016-03-07/7265-promo_roundup_march_2016/

Starting Tuesday March 1:
  • .CLOUD €9.00 per year through December 31
  • .CLUB 50% off through March 31
  • .CO.COM €14.69 per year through May 31
  • .ONLINE €5.00 per year through March 31

Spring has sprung: .XXX, .PORN, .SEX, and .ADULT are €12.00 per year through May 31

Starting Monday March 7:
  • St. Patrick's Day Promo: .PUB €7.00 per year through March 18

Ongoing promotions:
  • .ASIA 70% off, through March 31

Don’t hesitate to drop us a line with your impressions and feedback on any of our services or our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you.

Otherwise, see you in April.
You can also reach us at:

All the best, The Gandi Team