Support IDNcyclopedia.com

On the same day that DNForum suffered a horrendous attack at the hands of a malicious hacker; while other major domain forums were going on the defensive, frantically backing up databases and beefing up security; a small group of forward-thinking individuals was meeting to discuss the birth of a new forum - one that could have the opportunity to bring the domain world together in a way like never before. That forum - DNLocal.com - opens today, and is poised to be the premier domain name forum of its kind. IDNcyclopedia went behind the scenes to get an exclusive first-hand look at the creation process of this ambitious project.

The idea for DNLocal.com was born out of the closing of GotIDN.com, a forum with a similar concept, but lacking the strong core of focused individuals necessary to maintain such an ambitious undertaking. Two of the original founding five members of GotIDN, Gary Males (known as Alphamale) and Dave Wrixon (known as Rubber Duck), have returned as the de facto leaders of DNLocal.com.

"The situation with GotIDN was one where in six weeks we could not get members to answer emails but they dug their heels in on any discussion about extending ownership," said Rubber Duck.

Because of this situation, a complete overhaul of the ownership model was crucial to the inception of DNLocal. The potential founders were sworn to secrecy before receiving a PowerPoint presentation with a proposed direction for a new multilingual domain forum, as well as an invitation to a private Skype conference chat.

Alpha believes that with the new ownership and the commitment level behind DNLocal.com, the strong foundation upon which to build a successful forum is now in place.

"Not having that face to face contact where you can judge someone's commitment by looking at the white of their eyes always leaves you with doubts," Alpha said. "But we spent most of our time discussing [commitment to running the forum], and we have a strong team that are known to us and are respected in the IDN world. What was important was to mitigate the issues that plagued GotIDN, and I think we did that."

The team is as diverse as would be expected from a multilingual, international forum. In addition to Alpha and Rubber Duck (who have strong backgrounds in Japanese- and Chinese-language domains), members include 261275, a former GotIDN moderator specializing in Russian and Hebrew in addition to providing system admin support; thefabfive, also specializing in Hebrew and with some expertise in Arabic and focus on strategic projects; Davybuk, also focusing on strategic projects; and Lidador, whose language specialties are Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian, and who provides the graphic design and SEO expertise for the forum.

While they are mindful of the thin market of domain names (especially Internationalized Domain Names) and the amount of work, personal time and financial resources that go into creating and maintaining a forum, the team's decision to create a new forum was actually made very early in the conference call.

"I wasn't surprised that we all pretty much agreed - after all, that's why we're here," said Alpha "What I was surprised about is how well the call went considering it was 'text' based and there were six people who all have something to say - for the record, I hate IM."

"My single biggest concern was the strategy," he added. "But we quickly, unanimously agreed it was right on the money. In my book that's a major milestone. All the other stuff was almost inconsequential as we can easily adapt to fit."

The "other stuff" included choosing hosting and a name, two decisions that ultimately could not be made in the hour-and-a-half conference call, but were debated in numerous emails after the initial meeting.

One of the most important points was the name. The team wanted a name that could convey the spirit of the forum, but would also be short, memorable and easy for foreign domain investors to navigate. They considered some aftermarket domains, including IPForums.com and URLForums.com, but ultimately settled on the fresh registration of DNLocal.com.

"We're all involved in IDNs for a reason, and to be really blunt it's because all the half decent ASCII names are taken," Alpha said. "So choosing a fresh reg was always going to be a tricky debate."

In addition, the team wanted to get away from the "IDN" moniker, feeling that the "IDN" term is more of a Western term. To the local, multinational domainers who will be using these domains, they are simply "domain names," rather than "Internationalized Domain Names." DNLocal.com turned out to be the diamond in the rough that they were looking for.

"'Local' means 'Local' in many languages - Portuguese, Spanish and French to name a few - when you add English, you have approximately 75% of the Internet world. It's an incredible word," said Lidador.

"The name is just about perfect," added Rubber Duck. "The fact that it is still available just shows how different this concept is."

"Both DN and LOCAL are almost universally recognised even in non-Latin Language Countries, such as Japan, China and Russia," he said. "This is extremely important to us. We have to use Latin for universal access due to keyboard issues. We needed local recognition, but global span. A hard trick to pull in a dot com, at this stage of the game, but I think we have succeeded admirably. Even choosing the name, however, proved to be team effort and result."

"I think the decision was right not to look in the aftermarket for a name," Alpha confirmed. "We have many initiatives to spend funds on, and would much rather do that."

What will some of these initiatives include? IDNcyclopedia has been given a glimpse at the future strategy of DNLocal.com, and we can tell you that it is both exciting and revolutionary. However, it is one area where Alpha and team are being very tight-lipped. One thing they do promise is that they will give domainers and end-users the functional, fresh content and services that they are looking for. They also promised that IDNyclopedia readers will be among the first to hear about these new initiatives, so check back often.

In the meantime, make sure to visit DNLocal.com. We think you’ll agree that the progress this team has made in less than a week is nothing short of miraculous, and the resources and discussion topics that you will find are on the cutting edge of the domain industry.

_________________________________________________

We would enjoy your feedback and thoughts on this article. Please email us at info@idncyclopedia.com.