Most companies now consider the web site a key aspect of the business plan and bottom line success. According to IDC, two-thirds of small to medium sized business have the webmaster in-house. Webmasters are typically responsible for the content and stability of web sites. Having a good Webmaster is invaluable to any company with an online presence. GoDaddy.com has decided to build momentum toward officially honoring these critical professionals.

Bill Cullifer, Executive Director, World Organization of Webmasters noted, ”We think it’s great Webmasters are being recognized for their efforts. Webmasters are not geeks who sit in the server closet, they are integral parts of companies now. During the last ten years, the Internet changed the way we as a society interact. Webmasters are key to Internet development.”

Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy commented, ”The Internet wouldn’t be where it is today without this underappreciated group who keep content on the net fresh. I think a day to remind everyone of how vital Webmasters are is way overdue.”

April 29 is a time to celebrate the hard work and dedication Webmasters put in each day. Bake them a cake, give them a gift or send them an e-card. From articles to blogs, the holiday is picking up steam as a recognized holiday and the general consensus is it’s been a long time coming. It’s a move Webmasters organizations applaud and are helping publicize.

Mr. Parsons added, ”It’s just the right thing to do for our industry and for hard working Webmaster professionals. The Internet wouldn’t be where it is today without this underappreciated group who keep content on the net fresh. We hope the holiday will inspire gratitude for webmasters around the world.”

Mr. Cullifer added, ”We think it is great organizations like GoDaddy.com are recognizing webmasters for the true professionals they are. Webmasters serve their customers with a broad skill set, including strong technical, design, business and project management skills, and they play a pivotal role in any organization’s structure today.”

Anyone can go to www.GoDaddy.com/WebmastersDay and select a card to send to the person responsible for their Web site. Once you select your card, it will be automatically delivered. There is no cost, nor obligation.

Go Daddy is a provider of services designed to enable individuals and businesses to establish, maintain and evolve an online presence. Go Daddy provides a variety of domain name registration plans and web site design and hosting packages, as well as a broad array of on-demand services. These include products such as SSL Certificates, Domains by Proxy private registration, ecommerce web site hosting, blog templates and blog software, podcast packages and online photo hosting. The Go Daddy Group, Inc. has more than 28 million domain names under management. Go Daddy registers, renews or transfers a domain name every second. GoDaddy.com is the world’s No. 1 domain name registrar according to Name Intelligence, Inc. GoDaddy.com is also the largest paid hosting provider in the world, according to Netcraft Ltd. During 2007, The Go Daddy Group registered more than one-third of all domain names registered in the top six generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, including .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .mobi.

For more information about GoDaddy, please visit: www.godaddy.com.

To learn more about Webmasters’ Day, please visit: www.godaddy.com/webmastersday.

La Habra, California – [Hosting Headlines] – Lunarpages Web Hosting, provider of affordable and reliable website solutions, announced today a special discount for all new customers who purchase their most popular web hosting plan.

“Starting today, new customers who purchase our 24 month Basic Hosting Plan will benefit from a savings of $48!” said Amy Armitage, Director of Marketing & Business Development at Lunarpages. “We reduced the price to $4.95/month, which means more people can afford our already low cost solutions. And don’t let the name fool you – our Basic Hosting Plan can host blogs, forums, chatrooms, Joomla websites, ecommerce businesses, and everything in between.”

The Basic Hosting Plan, normally priced at $6.95/month, is now $4.95/month, and comes with Free Domain Name, Free Website Templates, Free blogs, Free photo galleries and chatrooms, and Unlimited email addresses. It also offers 1,500 GB storage space and 15,000 GB bandwidth/month.

This promotion is scheduled to last until June 20, 2008.

Lunarpages hosts over 150,000 customers worldwide out of 3 data centers and is best known for their reliable web hosting customer service and customizable solutions for personal and business websites.

For more information please visit http://www.lunarpages.com and use the coupon code “spring”

The registry declared that the price for .com domain names will rise from $6.42 to $6.86 and that the registry fee for .net domain names will increase, from $3.85 to $4.23. Ouch!

In addition the registry avers that the traffic volume continues to increase with the emergence of consumer-driven services, the surge in Web-connected wireless devices and the proliferation of technologies and services using the Domain Name System. It also claims to processe a peak of more than 33 billion DNS queries per day under normal traffic conditions.

The registry articulates that the .com and .net infrastructures are continually being fortified and scaled to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks and to help protect against service disruptions. It is increasing the capacity of its global Internet infrastructure by ten times by the year 2010. Additionally, it also states that it will increase its daily DNS query capacity from 400 billion queries a day to over 4 trillion queries a day and will increase the aggregate network bandwidth of its primary resolution centers around the world from more than 20 gigabits per second to greater than 200 Gbps per second.

The registry even announced that it will also expand its deployment of Regional Internet Resolution Sites to more than 100 locations across the globe by 2010. It is also deploying new proprietary security upgrades and monitoring tools to identify, track and isolate malicious Internet traffic generated from cyber attacks.

The company is offering a .mx domain registration for $6 per at 5 years.

The company believes that this is an opportunity to register company names with a .MX domain, at the best price. It further declares that customers can register domains for more number of years and pay less.

Level 1 PCI DSS Certified Service Provider! DataPipe delivers the best network & support; top tier data centers; New York metro, Silicon Valley, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai. DataPipe – Personal Touch, Global Reach.

The two-time Nationwide Series champion designed the black, orange and green vehicle (which can be viewed here) for Go Daddy shortly after becoming a company spokesman. In the press release, Go Daddy says that Earnhardt is excited to “rev the car’s engines and compete for his first win of the season in Texas.”

Go Daddy announced the Earnhardt sponsorship in December, after signing a deal with JR Motorsports and Hendrick Motorsports. The deal made Go Daddy the primary sponsor for the No. 5 NASCAR Nationwide Series Chevrolets for six races in 2008.

Mark Martin, the all-time leader in Nationwide victories, and Canadian racer Ron Fellows, will also drive the No. 5 Go Daddy Chevrolet this year. Last month, Go Daddy was the presenting sponsor for the telecast of the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at the Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee.

“NASCAR fans eat, drink and breathe this sport,” says Bob Parsons, Go Daddy CEO and founder. “They are incredibly loyal. The sport is exhilarating and our sponsorship is just a great match all the way around. We believe our car, our drivers and our partnership are a formula for fun and success.”

Nationwide Series races are broadcast live on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, with the O’Reilly 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series airing live this Saturday on ESPN2 at 3 p.m. EST.

The company declared that a key topic to be discussed at the meeting which will take place in Dubai, on 1-3 April 2008 is the possibility of getting domain names in Arabic online and making them available to the public. Further Participants will also discuss “finding ways to use Arabic for domain names as well as the use of Arabic invisible characters”, said TRA.

It also articulated that the ICANN community has been working on Internationalized Domain Names to make close to 100,000 characters from the scripts and languages of the world available for domain names. It also adds that the other important topics at the Dubai meeting include how ICANN works and what it does to coordinate the Internet?s unique identifiers, as well as updates on what is happening in developing an application and approval process for new top level domains; the part of the domain name after the dot.

“ICANN had incredibly productive discussions at its recent meeting in India on work being done to get the languages and scripts of that country available for domain names from beginning to end,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO.

Dr Twomey added: “The ICANN community is working on how these characters will be able to be implemented after the dot in domain names. There also is a process being discussed among our communities about whether there could be a fast track for a group of countries or territories that have a need for IDNs earlier than the others.”

For his part, Mohamed Al Ghanim, TRA Board Member and Director General said: “Being the legal registry of the UAE top level domain name .ae, the TRA is keen on working to enhance the statues of the national domain name in the IDN registry structure. Therefore, we strongly believe that this ICANN Regional Meeting is going to help all of us share experiences and work together to make that happen.”

“Internet penetration in the Arab world is considered very low in comparison to the English speaking societies. One of the obstacles facing the growth of this penetration is the language barrier. The TRA evaluates the importance of the Meeting’s objectives on IDNs as the best scientific way to provide the technological means to the UAE and the Arab countries to share an easy, available and vast source of knowledge with the goal of bringing Arabic to domain names,” Al Ghanim concluded.

“With over 10 million domains registered in China alone and over 150 million worldwide, the potential for .Asia is only now starting to be realized,” says Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia. “There are millions of great .Asia domains still available on a first-come-first-served basis.”

The previous ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Landrush’ phases saw over 500,000 .Asia domain registration applications, with approximately 45,000 domains fetching more than one application which will go to auction. This approach to domain registration helped reduced the chaos surrounding past domain launches as registrants clamor for high value domains.

Domains like buy.asia and hot.asia are among the valuable domains headed to auction. A live ticker and further information can be found here.

DotAsia is also launching its “Hot or Not” contest, which invites people to guess which .Asia domain will draw the highest auction price and what that price might be. The organization will announce contest details and prizes soon on think.asia.

Hong Kong Cyberport is among the first to recognize the value of “.Asia” by launching Cyberport.asia (cyberport.asia). The organization igns us with Hong Kong’s vision as Asia’s World City, and our mission to be the hub of IT business in Hong Kong and around Asia.