
Moniker.com's new and revamped interface is a disaster - Confusion
http://jacquesmattheij.com/moniker-com-is-being-murdered
======
robalfonso
I'm in the registrar space (not affiliated with moniker at all). I will tell
you what the real issue is. New gTLD's. (think .web,.app,.house,.car,etc) They
have forced everyone to at minimum update their provisioning and billing
systems. Some had older and crustier systems than others so its not surprising
to see this at all.

Once you update, its hard to make sure you caught every single business rule
and weird edge case from your old system and given many of the ccTLD's and
gTLD's all have slightly different ways of handling things (.eu domains have
no admin contact, .be domains must actually be renewed 30 days before they
expire or you lose it) its quite the nightmare and if its a really old system,
those tweaks are not evident.

Testing is also quite difficult as the ot&e environments the registries
provide are 1) not exactly like their live system 2) require you to create a
domain in order to do anything else. So in order to test your new system with
actual data, you need to create every single domain in your live system on
test. Then issue the commands to put it in exactly the same state as live,
however, you cannot mirror a domain perfectly as sometimes its state is set by
the registry for legal issues (udrp,etc). It would be much simpler if they
just copied live to their sandbox periodically.

I'm not defending them, their launch could have definitely gone much better,
but I've been in their shoes and I feel for the tech folks there who are
probably spending a lot of late nights at the office and working weekends
right now.

~~~
boobsbr
> Once you update, its hard to make sure you caught every single business rule
> and weird edge case from your old system

One of the reasons we're trying to migrate our rules to a rules engine.
They're scattered across pages, Javascript, controllers, services and DAOs...

No one knows all the business rules of the system, not even the BAs.

~~~
sanderjd
It seems like the hardest (or maybe just most tedious) part of this sort of
thing is keeping the rules on the front-end and the rules on the back-end
consistent. Obviously the back-end needs to be the canonical source of truth,
but it's nicer for the user if the front-end knows the rules too so that it
can do the right thing prior to a full request cycle. I'd be interested to
know if you've come up with a good solution to this, because I haven't found
any that are very satisfying.

------
rafaelm
It seems like they did not even test the new system. I participate in two of
the most popular domainer forums and there are stories of people losing
domains they had in their accounts, double and triple charges to credit cards,
whois privacy deactivated,etc,etc. Their website was down for around 2 days
and there's lots of people that lost domains because they were unable to renew
them. It's a huge mess. Some people had to block their credit cards with their
bank because they were getting hammered with charges.

I was charged for one domain that was not supposed to be renewed (I was
transferring it out). Now I have to deal with their abysmal customer services.

To add insult to injury, they posted a half-assed statement on their website
and social media accounts and left it at that.

Their previous interface was very simple, sometimes a bit awkward to use but
it worked and had no fancy animations,transitions,etc.

Unfortunately it seems that most registrars lack good UX designers.
Namecheap's recent re-design is also a mess. They added some fancy sliding
menus and animations on top of their old design and made it even more
confusing. But at least their system works.

~~~
derefr
> Namecheap's recent re-design is also a mess. They added some fancy sliding
> menus and animations on top of their old design and made it even more
> confusing. But at least their system works.

Eh, Namecheap didn't really do a redesign (of their service); once you hit the
domain management pages it's the same old 1995-looking views embedded in their
new layout. It's just the sales funnel pages that changed.

~~~
pasbesoin
I returned to this thread to comment on Namecheap. I see there are now a few
places I might reply.

The Namecheap redesign originally struck me as "design for design's sake" and
it continues to do so. A bit more than just the front/"funnel" pages, it also
impacted some of the menus and the cart and checkout pages.

With regard to the front pages, I found it no improvement. Some form of
"Bootstrap-ification" or whatever that served primarily to hide things rather
than to expose them -- both to me, a longstanding user, but also I suspect to
a fair fraction of new users.

Checkout also was initially more opaque, although that seems to have been
improved a bit since then. (Among other things, the first time post-design,
finding and renewing an associated "WhoisGuard" registration was a PITA game
of hide-and-seek.)

I found the redesign to be yet one more example of what I consider to be the
current, mistaken over-influence of "Design" and "Designers". Taking "stuff
that works" and "prettying it up" while making it: Harder to actually see;
harder to actually use; more bug prone; less responsive (as opposed to
"responsive"); etc.

There are plenty of good redesigns. But there are plenty of "redesigns for
redesigns' sake" that should be stopped before they are started.

The other day, I heard someone apply the Hippocratic Oath to an element of
software/systems design, and I found myself agreeing: "First, do no harm."

In Namecheap's case, I can understand the design to update a distinctly "old
school" appearance. But, as has been pointed out, the older design _worked_.
Keeping things working, and clear, should have been a primary -- first --
requirement of the redesign. They didn't fail entirely in that regard, but
they certainly annoyed.

Also, the redesign did look more than a bit like someone "slapped" a Bootstrap
theme or similar onto the site. Maybe it looks better particularly on phones
and tablets than the old site. But I didn't/don't find it particularly
attractive. If I'm going to devolve into discussing its "Design", I think they
could have done a fair amount better.

Anywho, the site is working, and on the rare occasion when I need customer
support, they've always been very responsive via IM (integrated into the
site).

Setting Namecheap aside, I hope that "the Web" in general, or at least the
parts I care about, can get past this apparent outsized influence of...
"Design" (/Craig-Ferguson-dramatic-expression-mode).

P.S. While I'm here, I'll just add: Darn it, Namecheap. "autocomplete off"
your credit card security code field!!! You got the message about the credit
card number field, but this change remains needed and outstanding (and has
carried over through the design change).

------
jeremymcanally
Wow, that's insane. But that result is fairly typical when a feisty new CEO
hands down an ill-defined "new vision" for an existing product, and the people
left to implement it have to figure out what that looks like. But it sounds
like no one even tested core functionality at all, which is sort of scary for
something as infrastructure-y as a domain registrar!

I moved most of my stuff to IWantMyName and haven't looked back. Super smooth
experience and they add new TLD's often. My initial attraction was .io
registration that didn't take a few weeks, but I've since been doing most of
my .com/.net/.org registrations there, too.

One day I'll stop being lazy and move everything off GoDaddy over there. :)

------
colanderman
_imagine Microsoft would re-arrange all the items in the menu system for
‘Word’ at random_

You laugh but they actually did this. _In realtime._ Behold adaptive menus:
[http://www.ehow.com/facts_7167433_adaptive-menu-windows-
offi...](http://www.ehow.com/facts_7167433_adaptive-menu-windows-office-
word_.html)

~~~
jacquesm
Truth is stranger than fiction. Consider me totally stunned.

------
RexRollman
Really, this is more an indictment of web based interfaces than anything:
users have no control. At least with regular software you can generally
continue to use the old version if you don't like the new version.

The most recent example of a bad redesign, in my opinion, was Flickr. The new
interface is awful and I have actually left the site because of it.

~~~
dingdingdang
This is a fundamental and very true point - as long as the web remains as
inanely centralized as it is presently there will never be stability/usability
on par with desktop applications. Not because web-apps are worse than desktop-
apps but because users can never manage to build up their skill sets before
the web-apps are changed and "improved": in conclusion this situation is the
bane of sanity and the course of the rise of the Slow Web movement!

------
ecaron
In all fairness, their old interface was a disaster too. From their
confusingly interconnected upsells, to DNS management, to renewals - its only
my distaste for GoDaddy's misogynistic attitude that's kept me from crawling
back (and hatred from transferring domains from finding something new
#theDevilYouKnow)

~~~
jacquesm
The old interface had two killer features that the new one lacks: it worked,
and I knew how to use it.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I don't know if you're part of the "oh, users just hate change" crowd, but I
kind of hope more software developers get bit by nonsense changes to
interfaces. What you're saying here is _exactly_ what we hear, all the time,
from Firefox and Chrome and Office and online services users.

A shame about Moniker BTW. The registrar I've been with since around 2001 has
also recently made a mess of things.

------
pgrote
The CEO responded to reports of issues in an interview:

[http://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/05/moniker-ceo-bonnie-
witt...](http://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/05/moniker-ceo-bonnie-wittenburg-
discusses-botched-transition/)

~~~
jacquesm
"Moniker formerly operated off a legacy code base built on outdated technology
that would not support the introduction of new products and services in line
with our goals."

I hope their goals include long term survival, the way they are going about it
I really wonder what sort of 'introduction of new products' would warrant a
non-incremental approach like this.

I've moved over a website a few years ago under heavy use (much heavier than
monikers ever would see) without the users noticing the switch had even
happened.

This was totally uncalled for and plays fast and loose with the moniker brand
as well as with the customers who typically depend on moniker to deliver.

The comments section underneath that article is absolutely terrible.

------
hackerboos
The new Moniker looks a lot like the new Namecheap - lots of change and a
poorer user experience.

~~~
kyle_t
^ This. Ever since Namecheap went through their 'rebranding' the site has been
slow and at times completely unusable. I consistently get timeouts when
performing basic tasks. The old site was ugly but it worked. The new site is
slightly less ugly and it barely works. They had a lot of goodwill built up
which they are slowly chipping away at.

------
ayb
I've been using Moniker since 2006 and the change has been pretty frustrating.

I also noticed that they changed the pricing for privacy from the $1 I've been
paying for years to $4. All the reps that got me the pricing are long gone and
no one from support has responded to my request to fix the pricing.

I'm nervous to transfer a few hundred domains to a new registrar but given
what I'm seeing I don't know how much longer I can tolerate what Moniker is
doing.

------
nullrouted
Moniker has been a disaster since Monte left and that was no secret. All you
had to do was look at the forums or read some of the posts on the domain
blogs. Do yourself a favor and move your names out now.

I would recommend:

www.dynadot.com

www.uniregistry.com

www.namecheap.com

www.pairnic.com

www.dyn.com

www.name.com

~~~
josephb
I've found namesilo.com to be a decent registrar. Growing at a rate, which is
good to see.

~~~
cmder
I'm on namesilo as well. Going well so far.

------
SkyMarshal
If UI/UX is your primary concern, check out Name.com. One of the best UI/UX's
on the web, period, much less among registrars. Perfectly Ajax-ified, eg, not
too much not too little, lots of attention to detail and every little thing
just works the way you'd expect.

That said, they supported SOPA and have been caught in the past redirecting
unused subdomains of registered domains. I switched to Namecheap and Gandi.net
as a result, but still Pine over Name.com's UI/UX. I rank it up there with
Gmail.

~~~
rgbrenner
Where did you get that they supported SOPA? (This is important to me.. I have
about 30 domains at name.com)

I found this, which seems to indicate the opposite:
[http://www.name.com/blog/general/domains/2011/12/it-aint-
abo...](http://www.name.com/blog/general/domains/2011/12/it-aint-about-the-
transfer-stopping-sopa-and-giving-back/)

~~~
SkyMarshal
Hmmm, not finding it now, only Name.com's blog posts opposing SOPA at the
time. Maybe I'm hallucinating, or maybe their opposition to SOPA was only
lukewarm and Namecheap's more aggressive stance got them all the credit. Not
sure now, but they were my main registrar then and something about the SOPA
was the last straw that got me to move my domains. Will try to remember what
and post it if I do.

------
whichdan
I just migrated from Moniker to eNom after having used them for years. Their
support is abysmal. Two weeks for them to manually change a nameserver since
the web interface wasn't working properly, and another full week for them to
remove a domain from my account that I had transferred out, yet was still
receiving pending deletion notices for.

------
epaladin
I moved to Moniker a couple years ago since there was so much praise for it on
Slashdot. I didn't check out the new interface yet. I don't have that many
domains, but if they're so interested in obliterating their core functionality
for no real reason, I think I'll play it safe and look into migrating
registrars.

~~~
erichurkman
I'm in the same boat. A handful of domains, moved there because of Slashdot.
If I hadn't seen this story on HN, I could have lost all of my domains upon
their expiration: my contact email reverted to an email I haven't used in
years and it appears my credit card reverted to an old (now invalid) number.

The new interface is awful, too.

Do any registrars have decent interfaces?

------
ams6110
_imagine Microsoft would re-arrange all the items in the menu system for
‘Word’ at random and would rename a couple for good measure_

Um, they did exactly that when they changed from their traditional menus to
the "ribbon." That's when I gave up on MS Office.

------
joelrunyon
When did "design" become more important than "works." Namecheap did a big
redesign as well recently & while it didn't "break" anything, it didn't really
add any value besides a new coat of paint.

------
esw
I was about to pull the trigger with eNom as a reseller before I read this.
Any recommendations? I'm currently using OpenSRS.

------
arfliw
wow - agree 100%. what did they do?!

i needed to renew a domain, just logged in and dug around in the interface for
at least ten minutes and i still can't figure out how to do it. can somebody
help me? how can i manually renew a domain right now? not set it to auto-renew
but renew it and pay now.

~~~
jacquesm
I haven't figured this part out yet. I've been billed for 10 domains but they
are all listed as 'payment pending'. It's completely crazy. If you figure any
of this out please post here, I promise to do the same.

~~~
arfliw
What a PITA this interface is...

This explains how to renew domains:

[http://wiki.moniker.com/index.php/Faq:renewdomain](http://wiki.moniker.com/index.php/Faq:renewdomain)

The credit card I have on file is old so the payment didn't process, but it
created an invoice. I was then able to go to 'Payment Options' in the sidebar
and click 'PayPal' and then pay the invoice. That renewed the domain instantly
(or actually, within about 10 minutes after I received the emails).

Be sure to set all of the domains you don't wish to auto renew to 'delete at
expiration' or they'll auto bill your credit card on file. They reset them all
to auto renew by default.

------
tragic
> Sometimes this can be a good thing but imagine Microsoft would re-arrange
> all the items in the menu system for ‘Word’ at random and would rename a
> couple for good measure.

Perish the thought!

