It’s been a long and arduous road for ICANN since last month when their application system for new generic top-level domains went down due to a software glitch. The glitch allowed applicants to see each other’s usernames and file names. It was pretty bad, but things would return to normal at some point in the future.
The future is now, or at least a future where people can start applying for gTLDs again. It was announced a few weeks ago that the application site would open again on May 22. Today is May 22 so you can start submitting applications once again. The new deadline has been set to May 30.
The great thing about the new gTLDs system is that you can apply for a TLD that is in non-latin or non-English scripts. While we’ll still have the good old domains like .com or .org, there is a chance that we’ll see some awesome new domains like .もえ.
ICANN fully expects that most of the applications were taken care of back in April when the application system was first taken down. The eight days between now and the final deadline are mostly for people who may not have finished the entire application process. You can still apply for a new domain though.
In a statement on the ICANN Web site, they said that a review of the system logs have revealed two instances where a single file was not available to an applicant. That problem has been fixed and the applicant notified.
You should get back to applying for a new TLD if you haven’t already. Of course, somebody might have already applied for the TLD that you want. PCWorld got their hands on the stats and found that there were over 2,000 applications in the system when it was taken offline. There were also 214 applications where ICANN had not received the application fee yet.
If you have yet to apply for a TLD or were in the middle of finishing up the application, ICANN suggests that you review the TLD checklist. It’s a comprehensive checklist that goes over every detail including the $185,000 fee it takes to register a new TLD. Anybody want to foot the bill so that we can register .もえ as a top-level domain name? Either way, you can start the application process here.