On January 15, 2012, VeriSign®, the registry for .COM and .NET, will increase prices.

.COM will go up by 7% and .NET by 10%.

The increase will be passed to registrars (like HAI Hosting) and then, unfortunately, to customers.

So, as of January 15, we will be forced to raise prices for both .COM and .NET domain name registrations and renewals.

If you want to avoid this price increase, at least for a while, renew your domain name now for a year or more. But, you have to let us know before the end of the day on Friday, January 13, 2012.

In early August, it was announced that Web.com had purchased Network Solutions. With that purchase, Web.com added more than 6,000 domain names to those it already had as the owner of Registrar.com.

If you’d like to read the news article that caught my eye, visit Website Magazine’s Web.com Buys Network Solutions or you can check out what Network Solutions has to say at Web.com to Acquire Network Solutions.

Network Solutions was most people’s registrar of choice when High Aspiratios, Inc. was started back in 1999. I remember all too well the hoops I had to jump through in order to prove to NetSol that my clients were indeed the owners of their own domain names and that they wanted to transfer them away to another registrar.

Luckily, this purchase won’t affect majority of our clients as almost all domains we handle for clients on maintenance are with HAI Hosting, our own host using the Wild West Domains/Go Daddy infrastructure, who we’ve found to be cheaper, provide quicker transfers, and better support.

If any of our clients are worried about their domain names, wonder who they are registered with, or want them transfered away from the unknown of a new Network Solutions owner, just let us know and we’ll take care of it.

In mid-June, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), voted to end restricting domain names to suffixes like .com and .net. A whole new internet is headed our way with domain names ending with TLDs (top-level domain) in any language such as .apple, .hp, and .google. The new TLDs will require an application, a legitimate claim to the name (such as a trademark), and verification and approval by ICANN. There will also be a hefty price tag as applying will cost $185,000. ICANN will begin accepting applications for new names on January 12, 2012. The first approvals are expected by the end of 2012.

Please view the ICANN press release for more information.