.CA Domains Technical Advisory

CIRA .CA Transition to EPP

As was announced last month, CIRA, the Registry that administers the Canadian country-code TLD, is making significant changes to its domain name registration system today, 12th October, which in turn requires changes by domain registrars to faciliate the new requirements and features.

The key changes you need to be aware of are as follows:

1. Domain registrations will now require a different set of extended attributes & terms agreement

2. Transfers in will require an EPP Auth Code

3. Transfers away will require that you provide an EPP Auth Code to the registrant

4. WHOIS Details Changes can now be made via the API and not just directly at CIRA

5. Redemption of expired domains will be permitted during a newly established Redemption Grace Period

CIRA has announced a 24-hour outage extending from 6:00am PDT October 12 to 6:00am PDT October 13, 2010 when the changes will be made, and so during that time all .CA domain registrations & management tools will be unavailable, and this is the time you should update your WHMCS install with the changes necessary for this update.

Update Patch

Therefore due to these changes coming into effect today, if you're selling .CA domains via WHMCS (and in particular if you're using the Enom API for automation), then you will need to download and apply this patch to WHMCS to add the new extended attributes and CIRA Registration Agreement to your order checkout process: http://www.whmcs.com/members/dl.php?type=d&id=60

You will also need to tick the "EPP Code" box in the Setup > Domain Pricing area of WHMCS for the .CA TLD in order to have WHMCS request users to enter EPP codes when ordering transfers and be able to retrieve EPP codes for their existing domains.

Regards,

Matt