Author: Comunicació

What’s the difference between an https domain and an http one?

Posted on by Comunicació

When you browse the internet you’ve probably noticed that some addresses start with http and others with https. This single extra letter means more than it might seem, as it is used to distinguish between two communication protocols.

What’s http?

Firstly, we should define http. The letters stand for HyperText Transfer Protocol. Without going into a lengthy technical explanation, this is the most common method of exchanging information online and is used for our browser to communicate with the server which is hosting the information we’re looking at.

Http is a stateless protocol, as it doesn’t house information and handles each information request as an independent transaction, without taking into account previous requests. For instance, http does not take into account something as important as cookies, which we find on practically all websites and which are stored as a way of recognising the previous activity of the browser.

Even though there have been various versions of the http protocol, the most commonly used continues to be http/1.1, from June 1999. The World Wide Web has changed a lot since then. For example, financial transactions are now the order of the day, meaning that the http communication protocol which was safe twenty years ago no longer provides sufficient protection for information sent online.

What’s https?

The need for greater security in the exchange of information led to the creation of https (HyperText Tranfser Protocol Secure). The final ‘S’ says it all here, as https is the secure version of http.

This new communication protocol combines the HHTP and SSL/TS protocols so that the transmission of data between the end user and the client is more secure. To achieve this, the protocol uses an encrypted connection meaning that the information is practically undecipherable to a third party.

Difference between http and https

Https was initially geared towards online commerce and banking but is gradually becoming a standard protocol for the internet.

Why is https gaining in popularity? Basically, because while information on a website with http can easily be intercepted by a user with bad intentions, this is much more complicated with an https website.

Nearly all websites today have a contact form, where users can fill in their personal details. This alone makes an https website worthwhile. Another benefit is that browsers place high value on security and are quick to warn you if the website you’re visiting is not safe. Consequently, if you have an http site it’s going to get fewer users over time, or fewer who feel comfortable visiting it.

How do I change my http website to https?

To switch a site from http to https all you need is an SSL certificate. You can request it from your hosting company, or if your site is designed with a website builder such as WordPress or Prestashop you can download the corresponding plug-ins.

This small gesture will make your .barcelona website more secure and also generate a sense of security among its visitors.

Cities that have got the dot: .stockholm

Posted on by Comunicació

We’re launching a new section at .barcelona looking at other cities with their own domain. One of the best known examples is Stockholm, which in just a few years has managed to make .stockholm the domain for all websites linked to the city council in the Swedish capital. A fine example of the use and implementation of a city domain.

We spoke about the .stockholm domain in an interview with Marcelle Abou Haidar Johansson, head of projects at the Department for Communication at Stockholm City Council.

Marcelle, what is your role within the .stockholm organisation?

Before becoming a project manager with the Department for Communication at Stockholm City Council, I worked with the domain register for the .se and .nu domains. Thanks to this prior knowledge, in 2016 I was asked to join the Department for Communication at the City Council to manage the project launch for the TLD .stockholm.

Since then I’ve been working to implement the TLD in network communications, as well as the updating and development of new websites for Stockholm City Council.

The .stockholm user profile is exclusively institutional, although it will gradually be opened up for other private users. What profiles do you think will be the most interested in using the domain?

As we had an “internal launch” with .stockholm only being used for the city’s organisation, we hoped this would give the TLD an identity status of belonging to Stockholm. As a result, I think the domain will be of more interest to businesses and organisations whose identity is strongly linked to the city of Stockholm.

Over these few years we’ve had various enquiries from small and medium-sized businesses in the city who wanted to be able to register a .stockholm domain. Judging by this, we think this will be the profile with the greatest interest in the domain.

What values for the city of Stockholm are the most recognisable for users of the domain?

Since we introduced the new .stockholm websites, the domain represents more advanced and modern technology which is better suited to users and to web accessibility. This comes in addition to a strong link with the city of Stockholm.

Can you explain the most characteristic success story for the .stockholm domain?

Personally, I love the work we’ve done with the main website for the city’s organisation. It’s a multi-site where various smaller sites converge both visually and technically. Each of these sites is for a specific service offered by the city. For instance, a nursery school (förskola in Swedish), a home for the elderly, business services etc. They all have their own .stockholm domain. This really helps with communication about a specific service. To use one of these examples, if we want people to enrol their children at a nursery school we direct them to förskola.stockholm. There we provide all the necessary information on how to enrol, along with everything else relating to that service.

This represents a change compared to the structure for our former website, where all the information was grouped together in the same place with a tree structure. That meant over 3,000 pages in the end, making it pretty difficult to find the information you were looking for. Even direct links were longer. The new format is much more direct and easier to understand.

What’s your go-to city domain and why?

The first two websites we created, förskola.stockholm (pre-school) and äldreomsorg.stockholm (elderly people), served as a way of testing the new structure and are the sites which citizens have been using the longest. Because of this we’re very fond of them, plus the fact they’re the most popular.

That said, my favourites are äldreomsorg.stockholm and motionera.stockholm. Firstly, because I worked personally on the conceptualisation and launch of both sites, but also because the result was a big improvement on the way users accessed the information before. They’re also very pleasing visually and the domains are spot on in what they communicate. This is one of the main reasons I love working at Stockholm City Council with the .stockholm domain.

How did you decide that the .stockholm domain would be exclusively for institutional use?

It started by chance. There are certain laws and regulations that prohibit the City Council from charging for or making any financial gain from a service unless this is decided on by the City Council itself or through one of its companies. As the application period for ownership of the .stockholm domain was shorter than the time it would take to make a decision over it, the team working on the .stockholm domain application at that time decided that it would only be put to institutional use.

Naturally, the plan was to open it up to the general public later. Even so, now that we’re using it this way it seems very natural to us and the best decision for the city of Stockholm.

How did the process go to switch all the council websites from .se to .stockholm?

The heaviest part of the work was to turn Stockholm.se into various smaller websites with .stockholm domains. This process was quite a challenge at many points. The biggest thing was the work prior to the change, considering that each municipal service is decentralised and most of them have their own communication staff and managers. In most cases, our central communications office came up against the fear of informing the rest of the municipal organisations that we wanted to change all the domains of one Sweden’s biggest websites.

Our website consultancy agency also had little knowledge of how to switch to a TLD that had never been used before. This meant they were also very cautious and reticent to start with.

But speaking to other people in the domain names sector, observing the experiences of other cities, regions and brands to see how they worked with their domains, helped us to draft an action plan for change.

The thing that concerned us most was losing traffic from search engines, which roughly accounted for 60% of all the traffic to the former website. In our preliminary research we reached the conclusion that the most important thing was to make sure that all our visitors would continue to find what they were looking for. Each of the pages from the old site were therefore assigned a new page and a new website. As we made an effort to eliminate unnecessary text and clean up the existing content, the result was that at times 10 or even 20 pages were redirected to a single page of the new website. We had 301 redirections from old links!

As we expected, in the first few months we dropped in terms of SEO, but later recovered. We also launched the mini independent websites one by one and linked them all together. The first two sites on pre-school and elderly people thus helped with later websites as they had achieved good positioning.

As a complement to this work, we’re changing other city domains (besides stockholm.se) to the new .stockholm. This work is still ongoing, but is simpler now as we have got past the heavier work at the outset.

Do people identify the .stockholm domain with Stockholm City Council? Do you think that’s a positive change?

I’d like to be able to say yes straight away, but I honestly think there are two types of people: those that take an interest and pay attention to domain names and those who simply want to reach the information they need. The former do look at the URL and identify .stockholm with the City Council. The latter probably haven’t even realised we’ve changed the domain, even if they use it every day. This group is bigger and perhaps the most important reason behind our good positioning in search engines, because without them they might not ever find us.

Generally, we see a very positive change and we’re very happy with the feedback we get from visitors to our websites.  All this is thanks to the work we’ve done with the website, working with our identity, brand profile, content, user testing, accessibility, SEO and more.

How to register a domain name written with special characters

Posted on by Comunicació

Every language has its linguistic differences. Like most European languages, Catalan has several special characters such as accents and the dieresis, and others such as the Ç and the interpunct.

We use these in writing, yet these characters can’t initially be used when registering a domain name or an email address. This means that we find examples such as a website for a calçotada becomes a calcotada, or a company advertising decoració uses the word decoracio, without the special character.

This does not happen with the .barcelona domain, as it accepts a long list of special characters. The name of your .barcelona domain can therefore be written just as it is with your project, meaning people can find you writing the right name and that it doesn’t appear strange to read. Examples here might include registering domains with names such as ràdio.barcelona, habitació.barcelona or abraçada.barcelona.

IDN and ASCII

Domain names which include special characters are called Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). They include characters outside the standard range for the exchange of information, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), which is the language used by the internet. As ASCII does not include accents or other characters from Arabic, Slavic, Asian or other languages, excluding a huge part of the world’s population, the need arose for internet addresses to be able to ‘speak’ in the way that their users do. The inclusion of these characters was proposed in 1998, but it wasn’t until 2005 that they were publicly presented by the ICANN.

The new characters have not actually been added to ASCII code, which the network continues to function with, but rather an algorithm transforms the IDN characters into ASCII. That’s why when we register a domain name with accents and special characters, we are also registering another at the same time with the standards for ASCII code.

Either way, IDN gives us more flexibility and freedom when it comes to choosing our .barcelona domain, meaning we can write using the characters of our language and in turn show the value of our identity.

To register a .barcelona domain with special characters, the holder must contact their registration company to request it. The registration company must do this at no charge, as it forms part of the particular characteristics of this domain.

BCN Market’s got the dot!

Posted on by Comunicació

The new online shop for city establishments, BCN Market, went live with a .barcelona domain and is now fully operative.

The website is a virtual shop window for neighbourhood commerce, facilitating sales both online and in person and enabling customers to see the product catalogues for all establishments, reserve and purchase items from home which can then be collected from the premises or home-delivered.

This open and collaborative platform between establishments has the aim of generating physical and online traffic for local businesses, helping local people find what they are looking for in city shops and provide an alternative to large online sales sites.

In addition, the BCN Market website allows users to download the Bonus Consum, 280,000 vouchers of 20 euros each which can be exchanged at local shops, services and restaurants until 31 December, and where the interested party pays 10 euros and the City Council pays the other 10 euros. These vouchers are being promoted jointly with Barnacom (the organisation which groups together the city’s shopping hubs under Barcelona Comerç and Barcelona Oberta), Comertia, Pimec, Foment del Treball, the Gremi de Restauració, the Agrupament de Botiguers i Comerciants de Catalunya and the Gremi d’Hotels de Barcelona.

Main topics for the GeoTLD meeting

Posted on by Comunicació

Frankfurt hosted a meeting for the members of the GeoTLD group on 9 September, adopting a hybrid virtual and on-site format due to the pandemic.

The meeting was used to present and discuss the latest on the next round of GeoTDL requests, as well as to exchange opinions on the relationship and cooperation between registers and different departments of the ICANN. The meeting concluded with a session on the abuse of DNS (Domain Name Systems) and cybersecurity.

These meetings are fundamental for members of the GeoTLD group to be able to exchange impressions in an enriching way, particularly on their goals and on the point where each of them is at.

A geoTLD is a top-level domain which represents communities of a cultural, linguistic or social nature with a strong and specific geographical presence. Members include the domain .scot, .cat, .eus and .gal, as well as city domains such as .sydney, .stockholm and .barcelona.

“Design can improve people’s lives”

Posted on by Comunicació

We interviewed Cristina Gosálvez, head of communication with the FAD, a leading organisation in the design sector in Barcelona and at a national level which has opted for a .barcelona domain as one of the main elements of its digital identity strategy.

What is the FAD and what does it do?

The FAD (Fostering Arts and Design) is a non-profit organisation which was founded in 1903 and is made up of design professionals and companies.

At the FAD we believe that design can improve people’s lives. That’s why we devote our resources to the promotion of creative culture, support for new generations and the stimulation of excellence in product design, architecture, fashion, graphic design, visual communication, crafts and the arts in general, through activities aimed at these professional groups and the public alike.

We also have a centre for advanced materials, the MATERFAD, which provides a service for professionals from the spheres of design, architecture and the arts, as well as companies looking to innovate towards sustainability with advanced materials and tech. The centre also provides training on materials for all these groups and for students from university schools.

The FAD is made up of five different associations. Why do they work together and what is the purpose of this union between the five of them?

Historically the FAD has had sectoral sections and groups, firstly within applied arts, music and theatre, and later, from the 1960s, when design was introduced in the country, the different disciplines of design. Today this union of associations and sectors of disciplines makes more sense than ever, as the disciplines inevitably interconnect and the boundaries between them disappear: craft and industrial design, the latter with architecture and interior design, communication and fashion are intrinsically linked to one another etc. The FAD offers a unique opportunity for its members to be able to get to know professionals from disciplines which are different and yet related, and we organise cross-disciplinary activities which include various or all of them. We are still open to new professionals from other creative disciplines joining up and interconnecting with those we have.

At present the FAD combines the Artists and Artisans’ Association (A-FAD), the Art Directors and Graphic Designers’ Association (ADG-FAD), the Industrial Design Association (ADI-FAD), the Interdisciplinary Association of Space Design (ARQUIN-FAD) and the FAD Fashion Community (MODA-FAD).

How important is digitalisation within your business? What channels to you use and how to you communicate with customers?

Digitalisation is a process which the FAD has pursued from the outset and the organisation has adapted to new technologies in parallel with the advances of the last twenty years. The website has been the heart of the organisation for some years now and is used to distribute information through the different digital channels, particularly social media. Getting the information to reach the target audience is the cornerstone for an entity which organises activities and offers information and services, and today everybody looks for and finds information on the internet, so in this respect this is a very clear option.

In the last year, with the pandemic, the on-site activities we organised were shifted online. Some of them will stay there forever because we’ve seen that they are effective in his format, but we continue to opt for face-to-face activity and contact as a way of relating to others. You can find the information on the internet today, but what you can learn from personal contact with a person of reference in your field or through a display with real objects cannot be compared. As an association we have to provide that added value.

Besides digital communication channels, we’re working to develop 100% digital and cross-disciplinary projects such as an online supply and demand platform for the creative sector, providers and clients.

What is the link between the FAD and Barcelona, in addition to being based at the Disseny Hub in Glòries?

The FAD was founded in Carrer Hospital in Barcelona in 1903 and since then it has been based in different spaces in the city. Consequently, the bond with the city is absolute, even though the organisation doesn’t limit its sphere of action to Barcelona. We have members all over Spain and even in other countries, and in this respect we want to keep growing.

Did you choose the .barcelona domain from the start of your business? Why did you choose .barcelona and what advantages does it offer you?

The fad.barcelona domain was not the first step, because our original website was created well before the .barcelona and .cat domains appeared, when practically the only domains in use were .com, .es and .org. The first FAD domain was therefore fadweb.org.

At present we have two domains, fad.barcelona and fad.cat. The .barcelona domain was a natural step, as we are an organisation which is well known for its link with the city. With FAD a well-used word in the English-speaking world and an acronym for various institutions around the globe, we’ve opted to link ourselves to Barcelona with our domain and our social media alike, to set us apart from other International organisations.

At the same time, Barcelona is known internationally for its links with design and architecture. The FAD, as a leading association for these disciplines in the country, and the oldest, has contributed throughout its history to make this possible. Now, in turn, what interests us is to be linked to our city, and what better way than with a .barcelona domain?

La Mercè’s got the dot!

Posted on by Comunicació

The city will be celebrating its local festival on 23, 24, 25 and 26 September, with this year’s event marking a hundred and fifty years since the City Council took charge of the festivities for La Mercè.

The Festes de la Mercè website, now with its own .barcelona domain, will be offering a programme with over 500 activities this year. These include the shows in the street arts section, concerts and popular culture activities, with nearly 200 popular culture groups, 110 artistic companies and 114 musical formations all involved.

Opening speech and poster both by women

As usual, the opening speech gets La Mercè under way. On this occasion the speaker will be Custodia Moreno Rivero, a leading figure in the local residents’ movement in the city who played an important part in the disappearance of the shanty housing in El Carmel and Can Baró, as well as other struggles.

The poster for this year’s Mercè is by the renowned illustrator Malika Favre, who was born in Paris and is based in Barcelona. This year’s image represents Mercè as a powerful queen who at the same time embodies all the beauty of Barcelona.

A decentralised Mercè which promotes popular culture

La Mercè is once again a citywide affair, reaching corners of the city which were previously untouched by the festivities. Activities are programmed in 23 locations and venues in all, with popular culture also featuring heavily in this historic edition. The section of Passeig de Gràcia between the streets of Diputació and Rosselló will provide a space for popular culture to reconnect with the public, with the parades and fire-runs which were suspended last year being transformed into a commemorative procession featuring giants’ groups, human towers groups and falcon human formation groups.

Safe festival

Full safety measures will be in place for La Mercè, to continue tackling Covid-19. This means controlled numbers of spectators, who will need to book tickets for most activities. For its part, the music and fireworks spectacular will be adopting the same format as last year and can be seen from four points in Barcelona. The display will also be broadcast live by TV3. 

How to renew a domain

Posted on by Comunicació

People and businesses build their identity around their name and their values. The same applies online. Our domain name defines us and enables others to recognise us on the internet. Because of this, it’s very important to renew our domain rather than keep registering new ones. This also gives us control over our online brand and means we can be sure it won’t end up in the wrong hands. Keeping our domain name also means we can carry on benefitting from associated services such as email accounts.

But how do we renew a domain?

When the time comes to renew a domain, we should contact our domain registration company. To find out when our .barcelona domain expires, we can go to the user panel and check the expiry date. Once inside the panel, it is important to select the domain we wish to renew, as we may have registered more than one. Once we select the domain we wish to renew, we find the option ‘renew domain’. This is where can choose the duration of the registration period, which may be for one year or longer. The ICANN allows a maximum of ten days for registration. Next, we should confirm the data and pay the quota.

There is no need to wait until the last moment to renew. Even if there are weeks left before it expires, we can renew our .barcelona domain in advance without the registration period being affected. For instance, if the domain expires on 1 January 2022, the next expiry date will be 1 January 2023, regardless of when we renew. This means that if we have a discount code we can make the most of when we want to apply it, whatever the date is.

What happens if the expiry date comes and goes and I haven’t renewed the domain?

Our registration company will usually contact us when the registration period is due to expire. This varies depending on the registration company, but we may be contacted up to 30 days before the domain expires. If for some reason we do not see the reminders, we still have five days after the expiry date in which to renew the domain. After those five days a definitive deactivation process begins and within a few days we will have lost the domain.

This does not mean we lose our domain name forever, but rather that it becomes available again for anybody wishing the register it. Consequently, if we are lucky and nobody registers the domain, we can register it again through the usual new domain registration procedure.

This practice comes with an element of risk, and apart from the possibility of not being able to register it again and losing our digital identity, the renewal process is more straightforward than registering anew.

To avoid headaches, many registration companies offer the possibility of automatic renewals. This mean that unless we indicate otherwise, the registration company will renew our domain every year without our having to think about it.

Can domains be bought and sold?

Posted on by Comunicació

At the point we register a domain, we own the rights to use the domain name for a specified period. However, the domain may change hands from one name or organisation to another at any time. Very often the domain registration company does not charge for this.

This leads many people to speculate with domains, registering names which may be needed by other people or organisations at some point, to then sell them on at a profit. Authentic fortunes have changed hands to register domain names, mainly in the early days of the internet.

Domains do not get sold on for millions of dollars nowadays, as there are multiple combinations and most people use search engines such as Google to find an address. Positioning therefore holds the key. Even so, the domain name is still very important and there are always people willing to pay a little more to get the name they had in mind. Many companies have built their brand around a specific name and logically wish to continue using that name online.

Legal limits

Buying and selling domains is not illegal, although some countries prohibit the registration of specific domain names intended to be sold on to a company or person that may have intellectual property rights over them. According to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), one party can contest the registration of a domain name by another party if the name or brand is registered. Non-compliance with the policy can lead to confiscation of the domain name, as well as legal consequences. This ICANN policy was conceived to combat cybersquatting, the practice of deliberately registering domain names corresponding to third parties with the specific intention of making money. In some cases, inappropriate use of these domains can also occur, to damage the brand in question.

That said, buying and selling a domain is not always illegal. When the process represents no harm to third parties it is perfectly feasible. Proof of this is the figure of the domainer, an investor specialising in managing domain-name portfolios which, without entering into illegality, speculates with domain names to make money. The activity of domainers is based on registering generic terms which may be of interest to big brands. Examples here might be ‘car hire’, ‘rural tourism’ or ‘home insurance’.

Domainers come up against some limits with registration policies for certain domains. For instance, if we look at the registration policy for the .barcelona domain we find that these must be registered by legal persons or entities with a link to the .barcelona community. Whether for linguistic, cultural, tourist, commercial or other purposes, this means the activity should benefit the .barcelona community. The party registering the domain should first explain the intended use of the domain name in question. These requisites make for lower levels of speculation with .barcelona domains.

The .barcelona domain joins the international geoTLD group

Posted on by Comunicació

Thanks to its participation in this association, the .barcelona domain is better represented in the sector and will be able to exchange experiences and generate transnational projects with other geographical domains.

By becoming one of the 37 members of the geoTLD group in the spring this year, the .barcelona domain forms part of a community of a million active top-level geographical domains which promote the digital identity of regions, languages, cultures and nearly 70 member cities on the internet. The most significant member cities are .berlin, .paris, .london, .tokyo and .madrid, which also joined recently.

This international non-governmental and non-profit association works in the interests of geographical domains as a way of promoting local identities, positively disseminating and sharing their values. It includes governments, organisations, businesses and associations from all around the globe. Chaired by Catalonia’s Nacho Amadoz, head of the Fundació.cat, the geoTLP group is also a hub for the exchange of knowledge, communication and marketing materials and research projects.

This working group is also present in the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), an organisation working to coordinate domains at a global level.

Visit the specific .barcelona domain page on the geoTLD website.