SiteGround Tutorials

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.tel Domains

.tel domains Introduction

What are .tel domains?

.tel is a new top-level domain which provides a revolutionary way to communicate. A .tel domain owner can store, publish and manage all the contact information and keywords directly in the Domain Name System (DNS). Through a .tel domain your published details will be globally accessible via all browsers and devices with Internet access. .tel domains are a perfect solution for business and individual users.

Simple, fast and accessible from every device, .tel provides a new Internet standard to take full control over how and where people reach you. Registrations of this domain extension are treated on a first come first serve basis, so we would encourage those who are serious about protecting their brand to secure their .tel domain as soon as possible.

.tel domains advantages

The main .tel domain advantages are:

Easy to use – You do not need any web-design and programming skills. You can store, publish and update online all your contact information and keywords under your unique .tel domain name without the need of a website. The functionality can be used within an existing website. Instead of a contact page, link to your .tel domain and take advantage of the real-time changes and easy updates that .tel provides.

Control your communications hub - A .tel domain allows you to create a fully interactive and live communications hub to take control over the way the customers communicate with you. Using YourCompany.tel, you can easily publish all your means of communication, for example: phone, mobile, fax, premium numbers, social network profiles, VoIP and email addresses. You can also store web links, geo-location data and keywords describing your business.

Join the only real-time, global directory - A .tel domain offers you an entry into the first global directory, allowing you to own and control all your contact information and update it in real-time. By contrast to the existing directory services that are highly fragmented and very expensive, the .tel functionality provides worldwide coverage, full control and real-time updating for only a fraction of the cost.

Effectively route customers to appropriate departments and locations -  Your .tel domain allows you to route customers to a department or a location of their choice using a quick and intuitive navigation structure based on the DNS technology.

Increase online discoverability - A .tel domain increases your business’s discoverability online by allowing you to publish multi-lingual keywords for each department and location. These keywords are indexed by leading search engines, which improves your online visibility.

Search Engine Optimization - .tel listings are optimized for search engines like Google and Yahoo Search.

Connect with your customers from any device - Your .tel domain makes your business or brand instantly accessible from every device connected to the Internet. Your customers simply type  YourCompany.tel in a browser, select a method of contact and click to initiate a communication session.

Gain an effective mobile presence - .tel domains are optimized for mobile devices since they use small and fast DNS lookups rather than pulling traditional website and HTML content. In this way you are quickly and easily found on all mobile devices.

Live update anytime, anywhere - YourCompany.tel may be easily updated in real time from every device connected to the Internet through a user-friendly interface.
 
Incorporate premium numbers for voting and betting services - A business could use their .tel domains to easily set up, integrate and manage time-sensitive tasks such as a SMS voting. For example, you can provide a voting functionality for a favorite TV reality show or a celebrity with a single-click functionality.  To view a live demonstration of this feature, visit My-Idol.tel.

Generate advertising and sales revenue under generic domain names - A business could also use the .tel domains for services that are based on generic names: hotels.tel, plumber.tel, insurance.tel, locksmith.tel, etc. Each .tel domain can easily have multiple sub-domains for navigation to local providers or specialists. To view a live demonstration of this feature, visit Hotels.tel.

Drive traffic to E-commerce storefronts - A business can use the .tel domains to offer store-front services and collect micro-payments for downloads, products or services. For example: a celebrity fan club site can provide news, chats, or downloadable mobile content such as MP3s and ringtones. To view a live demonstration of this feature, visit Celebrity.tel.

What to avoid

You have the opportunity to publish a lot of personal details through your .tel domain. Thus it is wise to consider which of the details should be publicly available and which of them should be available only to a defined group of friends.

You should avoid publishing your date of birth, home address, social security number, bank details or other financial indicators about yourself in your keywords. Never put personal information about other people you know without seeking their permission. Avoid putting the names and the locations of places you frequently visit, such as clubs, restaurants, bars, gyms, etc.

Setup

Account Settings

After you register your .tel domain name, you will be provided with the corresponding login details: username and password. The link to the management panel will be included.

 

If you can not remember the password, click on the Forgotten your password link.

In the management panel you can store, change, update and publish your contact information.

You can edit the account settings from the settings area.

There you can alter the password and the e-mail associated with the .tel domain. You can enable the TelFriends system and set a .tel e-mail.

E-mail Settings

The main advantage of a .tel domain is that you don't need a hosting account to use it. However, if you want to have email accounts for your .tel domain such as user@yourdomain.tel, you will need a hosting account.

 Follow the steps below to set up a mail account for a .tel domain:

 First and foremost, you must have a registered .tel domain. SiteGround customers can order a new .tel domain from their Customer Area > Order Domains.

• Log in to your .tel domain management section and go to settings -> Setup .tel email.
• In the Server host name field type the host name(s) of the mail server(s) that will handle your mails. For example, if your account is hosted on the siteground200.com server, type siteground200.com in the field.
• In the Order field enter a number for the order in which the server(s) will be used. For example, you can type 1 for your first host name and increase the number for any additional host names.
• Click Save to save your domain's MX records.

• Now you need to create the mail account(s) that you want to use with your .tel domain. To be able to do this, you should first park your .tel domain from your cPanel > Parked domains. Note that due to their specific DNS setup, .tel domains cannot work as parked domains. The only reason you need to park the .tel domain is to be able to create mail accounts for it.
• The last thing you need to do is to create your mail accounts for the .tel domain from your cPanel -> Email accounts.

 

Dashboard

Once you log in your .tel domain management panel you will see the Dashboard:

 

This is the main control panel for your .tel domain. Here you can enter all the details associated with it including the contact information, text, keywords and a location. The Dashboard is divided into several distinct parts.

Profiles

Under the Profile section you can alter your current account profile, set a new one, activate, rename or delete it.

Based on this functionality you can define which contact information to be displayed. The information is public or private. Only those with an access to the private information will be able to see it. You can pick a selection of the contact information which will be visible depending on the activity or the time of the day. For example, if you have an office telephone number, a mobile phone number and a private one at home, you will probably not use all of them at the same time! A Profile allows you to easily change the preferred contact information.

NB:  You are not allowed to delete an active profile nor the default one. In order to delete any profile, it must be inactive. To delete the active Profile, select another one from the drop-down menu, switch to it and click Activate. Then pick the Profile you wish to delete and click on Delete.

NB: If you want to display your contact information it has to be associated with at least one Profile. Additionally, each Profile must have at least one public contact item in order to comply with the Acceptable Use Policy for a .tel domain. If you are concerned about the security of your personal data you can put a general web site link instead of it.

Text Header

This section allows you to publish a short text on the top of your .tel page. For example, you can enter a short description of your company. The maximum length of the text is 255 characters.

To start entering the text, click on the Edit button. Once you are ready, save the changes by clicking on the Save button.

Different profiles can have separate Text Headers.

Contact Information 

When you enter your .tel management panel for the first time, there are no contact details. Click on the Add button to enter the contact information.

In the Add new item area you should pick a type of communication (phone number, email, URL, fax, VoIP etc.) from the corresponding drop-down menu. Additionally, you can select the location for the contact information (for example select ‘Work’ for your business contact or ‘in transit’ while you are traveling).

Next you need to include a description of the contact in the Give this contact a Label text box. The exact contact value should be entered in the Enter the Value text box. If you disable the validation check, you can enter even incorrect values. Otherwise you should follow the standards for the chosen contact. For example the phone numbers must use international dialing codes and the allowed characters are numbers (e.g. a US number should be +1XXXXXXX, UK +44XXXXXXX).

One of the contact types is a Go to a .tel link, which can lead to each sub-folder in your .tel domain. The label and the location options are disabled for this contact type. You can also add a link to a different .tel. Add a full stop (“.”) after the .tel name to indicate that the link is outside this .tel and it is not relative to the current folder.

In the advanced options you can define whether the contact information is publicly accessible or select different groups of friends who will have access to your private data. Additionally, you can associate the contact data with the available profiles. Click on the Save button once you are ready.

All the entered contact details are displayed under the corresponding section. The visualized information depends on the Profile associated with it.

Once you enter a new line in the contact information list, you can perform different actions on it.

You need to select an item to perform an action on it. You can either add an item to the currently active profile or to all profiles. You can remove it from a single or from all profiles. You can delete the item, copy or move it.

 

Keywords

In the Keywords section you can publish descriptive keywords which will help visitors easily find your .tel domain. This will increase your search engine ranking.

Click on the Get started button to add the first one. The others can be added using the Add button.

The Add Keywords box will appear.

There you can click on the different categories and enter the corresponding keywords. If you can not find a suitable category, enter them in the Free Text section. Click on the Save button to keep the newly-entered keywords. Please note that the keywords entered in the other tabs will not be stored. You can save the keywords only from the active tab. If you need to enter keywords in a different tab, you should select it, enter them there and click on the Save button. Fields can be skipped and reordered.

The keywords will be indexed by the leading web search engines. This will help you increase the visits on your .tel domain and to attract new customers for your business projects. Keywords are independent of profiles, but can be altered at different folder levels.

Folders

Folders functionality expands the navigation capability of your .tel domain. 

If you have a lot of contact points, you probably want to spread them on several pages. This will provide a better visibility of your contact details in mobile devices with small displays. In this case, you should use the Folders option to logically group the contact information – like business details, favorite links, social media sites, professional information and more. 

Technically, a folder is a sub-domain of your .tel domain. You can set a direct link to it.

NB: Information in sub-folders is always available to everyone and is independent of profiles. Private information is not supported in sub-folders.

To add a new folder, click on the Add button.

Enter the folder name. You can enter only letters, digits and hyphens in the subfolder name. A subfolder must contain at least one letter and its minimum length is 3 characters. The links to the folder in a browser will have initial capital letters and any hyphens will be converted to spaces. For example "my-bysiness" will be visualized as "My Business". Once you are ready click on the Save button.

The Dashboard will only show the first level of sub-folders. If you want to view a deeper folder level, click on the corresponding subfolder. The contact information under the subfolders can be managed in the same way as under the main fodler.

In order to delete a folder, hover the mouse over its name and click on the Delete link. By deleting a folder you will permanently remove all of its sub-folders, the contact details and the corresponding items. 

 

Location

Probably you would like to show your office location to the visitors of your .tel domain. This can be completed through the Location functionality. 

Enter the address in the search field and click on the corresponding icon. The integrated Google Maps engine will visualize your location. You can Save it. 

The location will appear in your .tel page as a direct link to Google Maps.

The location information is publicly available. If you do not want to show your location, use the Delete button.

Location records are independent from the Profiles . Still they can be set for every sub-folder level.

Put .tel in a browser

Once you have populated your .tel contact information, you are ready to go live.

You can open your .tel domain through your favorite browser:

You will see your publicly available data displayed on your .tel page. The page is shown in a unified style for all .tel domains. It is created automatically and cannot be personalized.

The information which you have entered in the Dashboard area will be visualized.

On the top of the page you will see the Text Header. It will be shown as a bold text. The Contact Information will be displayed under it. Different parts of the contact information will be clickable based on the device which you use to open your .tel page. For example, if you have published a number for an SMS, the link will be clickable through a mobile phone, but it will remain static on a computer web browser.

The next section includes the links to your folders. The actual links are preceded by the Go To label. Hyphens are converted to spaces and the first letters in the links are capital.

The location is displayed as a direct link to Google Maps. It is followed by the Keywords list.

NB: Sometimes the changes of your .tel details will not appear immediately on the corresponding page. Since the .tel system is based entirely on the DNS functionality, it can take a while for your Contact Information modifications to propagate.

Mobile browser

When you access your .tel page from a browser on a mobile device, the system will recognize it. Your .tel will be shown as a mobile-optimized version with no graphics. The .tel developers provide additional tools for different mobile devices. You can check them in the .tel developer area.

vCard

You can keep a copy of the contacts from a .tel page by clicking on the Download vCard link and store it as a new contact in the address book on your mobile or mail client.

NB: Different devices and applications use different vCard standards. Some contacts may not be exported into a vCard automatically.

Login

The visitors on the .tel page are divided into two categories: friends and visitors. To share your private data with friends, you need to activate the TelFriends functionality.

The visitors can sign-up to the TelFriends system. Then they can log in your .tel and send a friend request.  

You can define them as friends. The friends will be able to see the contact information which you have set as private.

Privacy and friends

The .tel system allows you to store encrypted private contact information. The .tel service uses advanced 1024-bit encryption which is extremely difficult to be compromised. When you make a part of your contact information private, it is encrypted. You and the friends who have the authorization to view the private information will need a corresponding key to decode it. The key is generated when you accept a request to show your private information to an identified individual. For this functionality to work both you and the person requesting the information should be identified by the global TelFriends system with a unique username and a password. The subscription to the TelFriends system is free and the ownership of a .tel domain is not required. In this way the visitors of your .tel will be able to log in and request a friendship, which will allow them to see your private contact information.

The private information can be kept only under the main folder. The information under the subfolders is public. Keywords and the location can not be encrypted in the DNS. They are public.

By default all the information is public.

There are 3 ways to make a certain information private:

 - During the creation of a contact information item you can define whether is it public or private.
 - You can edit a contact information item and change its access rule to private.

-   You can add contact information items to groups of individuals on the Privacy page.

You can easily change the private information back to public. You can either remove the corresponding items from all private groups on the Privacy page or you can edit them in the Dashboard.

The Privacy page consists of two columns. The left column is named Friends in group. There you can add more friends and remove existing ones. The right column is called Items in group. More items can be added as private or the listed ones can be removed.

The default groups are All Friends and Family. These groups allow a simple way of sharing the private information with your friends (for example personal email addresses or a link to your residential address). You can create different groups and share separate contact information in them. This will allow you to put different individuals in these groups and define the information visible for them. The groups' names and the users under the defined group will not be publicly available, so the users will not know who else is in their group.

You can rename or delete any group except All Friends which is a default list of all your friends.

A new group can be created from the Groups drop-down menu ->Create new group. Enter the group name and click on the Save button.

Friends can be added to multiple groups. You can add a friend from Friends in group -> Add.

If a friend is a member of more than one group, he/she will see the private information available for the members of these groups.
                     
In order to add contact information to a group pick it from the Groups drop-down menu. If the item you want to include is public, adding it to a group of friends makes it private automatically.

Items can be added from Items in group->Add. Select the items which you want to add and click on the Add selected button.

A visitor can send a friend request from the .tel page.

Once the request is received, you can see it in the management panel.

Click on the Accept friend invitation icon to allow the user an access to your private details associated with the corresponding group.

The list of friends' requests is limited to 20 records. You can either accept or decline them. The requests will be removed from the list. You should click on the Check New button to see whether there are new requests waiting for your attention. A notification is sent only if you accept a friend request.

Your new friend can log in your .tel and check the corresponding private information.

You can also send a friend request to another .tel domain owner. This can be completed from the Friends tab->Messages->Send.