The New Zealand Domain Name Commissioner's Office has announced a 22% increase in the wholesale price of domain names that end in the  .nz extension .  We anticipate that our domain registrar, Dreamscape Networks, will pass this price increase on to all registrants in the near future.

Domain registrar Dreamscape Networks has increased the price of most of their domain name registrations and renewals for the beginning of 2025. The new prices are reflected in the NZ Domain Manager at www.domainmanager.co.nz . All future domain renewals will be at the current prices as displayed in the Domain Manager. 

We have moved from a maximum billing cycle of 12 months, to a maximum 6 month billing cycle.  If you were previously billed for 12 months in advance, your next invoice will be for 6 months.  We are making this change due to a number of factors. This includes regular pricing hikes by our upstream providers and the weak New Zealand dollar. So we need to be able to adjust our pricing more regularly to take account of these things. 

Our upstream providers have released a new updated version of the NZ Domain Manager. This loads from our new NZ Domain Manager website at  www.domainmanager.co.nz . It is essentially a new more modern interface on top of the existing domain management system.  Please note that any previous emails you have received that contain renewal links will no longer contain valid links, so they won't work. So you will need to go to the new website at  www.domainmanager.co.nz  and log into your 'Account Manager' to renew or register any domains.  

Date: September 4, 2024 - October 5, 2024  Time: Rolling  Scope of Work: Our upstream providers are going to be rebooting various systems throughout the month due to them being up for over 180 days. They do this to ensure they don't FSCK (file system check) if there is a sudden reboot. Downtime is usually 5-10 minutes while the systems reboot but maybe longer if any issues are encountered. If you notice some downtime then this will likely be the reason. 

We will not be receiving email via our old @loungenetwork.net email accounts from now on. Instead we are now solely using our @loungenetwork.co.nz email addresses for all correspondence.  We haven't used email addresses using @loungenetwork.net for several years as we have been phasing it out.   All emails that clients send us need to be sent to our @loungenetwork.co.nz email addresses from now on.  Therefore please do not send us any emails to email addresses that end in  @loungenetwork.net as we wont receive them. 

Our upstream providers are upgrading their database infrastructure to MySQL 8, the latest version of one of the world's most popular and reliable database management systems. This upgrade will bring numerous enhancements and features that will greatly benefit our clients and their applications. Let's highlight some key advantages and exciting features: Enhanced Performance: MySQL 8 is packed with performance improvements, including multi-threaded reads, an optimized cost model, and new indexes. These enhancements will result in faster query executions and improved response times, delivering a more efficient user experience. JSON Support: With MySQL 8, we are bringing JSON support to our database environment. This means you can now store, manipulate, and query JSON data directly within your database, allowing for greater flexibility and ease of handling complex data structures. Window Functions: MySQL 8 introduces window functions, empowering you to perform complex analytical qu...

If you are still using your domain name as the mailserver address in your email client (eg such as Outlook) , you may start to get a security certificate error in your email software.  The server mailserver address you need to use for your email client needs to be set to the following for your incoming mailserver. If you are also using our servers for your outgoing mail, then you also need to make the same change to your outgoing mailserver. Choose either the Wildcat or Gemini mail server address below depending on the server you are on. If you aren't sure, try one and if it doesn't work the other one should. Incoming Mail Server: wildcat.elinuxservers.com   or   gemini.elinuxservers.com IMAP Port: 993  /  POP3 : 995 Outgoing Mail Server: Your ISPs SMTP server or wildcat.elinuxservers.com   or   gemini.elinuxservers.com SMTP Port: 465 / 587 You can also access webmail through the following link  Webmail Login

Our Upstream Providers have recently their hosting and domain registration prices effective from the 1st April 2023 for those on our lower priced plans. We are therefore having to increase some of our own prices. Inflation is causing prices to increase throughout the New Zealand economy, so a price increase shouldn't be unexpected. Likewise the weak NZ dollar means we are paying more for some wholesale services including hosting, which we pay for in USD.  Unfortunately most NZ businesses are having to increase prices. You should see the updated price on your next invoice. We also haven't increased our prices for many years, but it is a fact that in the current economic climate, a price increase was inevitable.  

Due to increasing costs some domain name extensions are increasing in price. All .NZ domains will increase from $NZ 44.94, to $NZ 49.95 per year. This is actually our first price increase for .NZ domains in the 20 plus years we have been in business. It is also only a $5 increase as we have tried to keep the increase as small as possible. Some international domains such as .com, .net etc will also increase in price by similar amounts.  You can check out our full pricing and our full domain name range inside our NZ Domain Manager at http://domains.loungenetwork.co.nz/