All about .tel

If you do have a .tel account this post should fill you in on any question you may have regarding .tel accounts.

General

Q: Can I run a commercial directory under a .tel domain?
A: You are absolutely allowed under the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to run a commercial directory-style service under your .tel domain; the restrictions are that you are not allowed to sub-delegate the management of that contact information to a third party.

Q: Can registrants use a .TEL for an email addresses?
A: Yes, it is possible to have an email address using your .TEL (i.e. adam@smith.tel)

Q: I cannot log in.
A: Please make sure your username and password are correct. If you cannot remember the correct password, please click “Forgotten your password?” on the login page and type in the email address that you used to register your .tel domain. The system will send you a message with temporary passwords for all .tel domains associated with that email address.

Q: Can I manage all my .TEL domains from the same control panel?
A: Yes, all your .TEL domains can be managed from the .TEL management console. Select the domain that you wish to switch to in the upper right-hand corner of the panel.

Note: If you bought another domain(s) with another company, it would be editable from a different URL.
If you do not see a .TEL domain that you own, it may not be associated with your user account. You must verify if the domain name is registered with Webnames.ca.

Q: It says “To share your private data, please Activate TelFriends”.
A: This is not an error. TelFriends is a free service for managing all your Friends in one place. By default, this feature is not active. To share your private data with friends, you will need to activate this feature by signing up to TelFriends. Please note that it could take up to 30 minutes to receive the confirmation email once you have signed up for TelFriends.

Q: A part of the page disappeared.
A: If you do not see a part of the Dashboard page, you might have accidentally clicked the title of one of the panes, such as Text Header or Contact Information. Your .tel control panel allows you to roll up panes that you are not using to optimize space on your Dashboard. To see the hidden pane, click the heading, and it will roll down.

Q: Can I add a logo to my .TEL page?
A: No. Your “.TEL page” is a page generated by the registry to display all .TEL contacts and you cannot personalize it.

Q: I understand TelHosting is available in 10 languages in addition to English. What are they and how do I access them?
A: Effective July 2, 2009, Telhosting is supported in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The language shown will be automatically determined from the language settings within your Internet browser, so your Telhosting view will be in French if your browser preferred language is set to French. To change your default language in your browser, under “Tools” go to “Internet Options” and under the “General” tab, click on the “Language” button. Add the language of your preference and move it up to your preferred language. You will instantly see your Telhosting page updated to the appropriate language.

Text Header

Q: How do I add text?
A: In your .TEL management console, double-click the grey area at the top, type in your text and click save. To edit or delete, double-click again.

Q: There is no delete button. How do I remove text?
A: Simply edit the text header to erase everything and click Save.

Q: Why doesn’t my text header show in my .tel?
A: The text header you entered may belong to an inactive profile. Make sure that the text you are editing is in the profile with “(active)” in the name.

Contacts

Q: How many items of contact information can be stored in a .tel domain?
A: Technically, there is no limit to the amount of information that can be stored in a .tel domain. However, depending on the size of the contact info you manage, your service provider may charge more. For further details regarding this, please talk to your service provider.

Q: I cannot add a contact.
A: If you enter your contact details but cannot save it, you may have used the wrong format; a red band should appear at the top of the window with instructions on the correct format for labels and the contact information itself. If you’re trying to enter a phone number, use international format, e.g. +442074676400 – no letters, spaces or special symbols. Also, the domain name is case sensitive. Only use lower case letters for the domain name.

Q: How do I add extension numbers?
A: If you need to specify your extension number in addition to the main number, type in the extension in the Label field. Your contact value should follow the international format and contain no letters or spaces. This way, you phone number will always be in the ‘click-to-call’ format.

Q: How do I preview a contact?
A: Once you save your contact, it gets published to the DNS and is instantly available in your .tel. Type in your .tel name in a new browser window to see how others see your page.

Q: Where is the delete button?
A: To remove a contact item, Select the contact you wish to delete, and choose Delete from the Actions drop-down box at the top of the contacts list. Note: deleting the contact record is permanent; consider disabling the contact instead to make it invisible but retained in case you need to show it again. You can delete any contact item, except for the last item of public contact information in your .tel. You must always have at least one public contact item, such as a website link or phone number.

Q: How do I add a link to another .TEL domain?
Create a new contact, website link and add the .TEL domain name there.

Q: My contact does not show in my .tel.
If you added a contact item on your Dashboard, but it does not show up on your .tel page when viewed in a browser, the contact item may be private (viewed only by friends who have logged in your .tel), disabled (added to the Dashboard but not published) or inactive (added to a profile that is not currently active). Edit the contact in the Dashboard to ensure that it’s public and in the active profile.

Q: How do I move a contact around?
A: You can re-order contact items by clicking the arrows icon in the list of contacts and moving the contact up or down. You may wish to change the order for a more user-friendly experience for your visitors.

Q: Can I do bulk data imports, e.g., many telephone numbers at once?
A: No facility is provided in the standard web interface for bulk uploads at the moment, although it may be at later stages.

Q: I entered my postal address, but it does not show up in my page.
A: If you use Location to add your address, it is stored as a Google maps link so that you can click it and see it on the map. If you want to display the address in your .TEL page, use keywords.

Q: How do I remove links to my subfolders from the list of contacts?
A: Currently, the web interface automatically adds links to all sub-folders in your parent folder. You cannot remove those links but you can re-order them to make them look better.

Keywords

Q: Only a part of my keywords list is added.
A: Your free text and hobbies keyword categories are limited to 255 bytes; any text beyond this limit is not published. Please consider using other categories and reducing the message. Keywords are not intended for storing long paragraphs.

Q: I clicked Save but my keywords were lost.
A: When you click add to include keywords in your domain, you see multiple tabs. Clicking save saves the keywords only in the current tab, not all the keywords you entered. Make sure you click save on each tab not to lose any.

Q: The address fields are in the wrong order.
A: If you wish to change the way your keywords are displayed, simply drag-and-drop the fields as needed by using the buttons on the side.

Q: My text (or keywords) doesn’t show correctly.
A: Are you trying to add non-ASCII characters? The .TEL supports UTF-8 encoding so you should be fine. Check your web browser encoding settings.

Profiles

Q: Why are some contacts grey?
A: Contacts are not included into the current profile are greyed out on the Dashboard. To add these contacts to the profile, tick the contact and select Add to profile in the Actions box.

Q: I do not need profiles, I just want to add a few contacts.
A: Profiles are optional and are included into .tel for your convenience. When you start, you have a “default” profile, where all your contacts get added. If you do not wish to set up any other profiles, you do not need to.

Location

Q: My location does not show as my address.
A: The Location record is a combination of longitude and latitude displayed as a map entry. If you want to publish a postal address, use the keywords or the text header.

Q: How do I make my location private?
A: Your Location is always public in .tel. If you wish to add a private location, you can use other services, such as BrightKite, and add links to those as private contacts.

Q: What if I want to add more than one address?
A: Normally, you cannot be in more than one place at a time. If you need to enter multiple locations, such as temporary and permanent, consider adding them to the text header in different profiles, and switching between profiles depending on your current location. If you wish to have several locations displayed simultaneously, enter them as keywords and use the Label field to describe each location. Remember that keywords are always public, so don’t put your home address in there if you do not want it to be publicly available.

Folders

Q: How do I add a private contact to a sub-folder?
A: All contacts in sub-folders are public and visible to all. If you wish to add private information, please use your main domain folder.

Q: Can I have direct links to my sub-folders?
A: Yes, folders are sub-domains of your domain, so you can enter their names in a browser – the folder name comes before your domain name. For example, if yourname.tel has a folder social, you can go to that folder directly by entering http://social.yourname.tel in a browser.

Q: How do I delete a folder?
A: Hover your mouse beside the folder name in the Folders pane on the left; when you see the Delete button, click it.

Q: How do I delete a link to a folder?
A: When you create a folder, a link to that folder is automatically added to your .tel. Similarly, when you delete the folder, the link is deleted as well.

Q: How do I rename a folder?
A: You cannot change the sub-folder name; to change the folder name, create a new folder, copy all contacts from the old folder to the new one (in the old folder, do ‘Select all’ and in the Actions drop-down box, select ‘move to…’), and then delete the old folder.

Q: Can I move everything to another folder?
A: You can select multiple or all contacts and keywords in a folder and choose move to… in the Actions box to migrate the contacts to another folder. You cannot move/or copy locations, text headers or whole folders.

Friends

Q: Why do I have to log in again in the control panel?
A: After you activate TelFriends and create an account, you need to log into TelFriends once in your .tel control panel, so that it remembers your login and gets friend messages for you.

Q: I returned from vacation and do not see any new friend messages.
A: Your friend message box may overflow if you do not act on your messages. If this happens, people will not be able to send you friend requests. To make space for new friend requests, accept or reject existing messages, and they will be deleted to allow new message requests to be sent.

Q: How do I invite somebody to be a ‘friend’ of my domain?
A: Currently, you cannot pro-actively invite people to be friends of your domain. However, anybody can request to be added to your friend list by sending a friend request using a form on your .TEL web page. In addition, a .TEL domain owner can send such a request from their .TEL management console, Friends tab, list of messages, send button.

Q: I received the error “Not associated with a TelFriends account.”
A: That’s normal. This means that you do not have a TelFriends account associated with this domain. You only need to be registered at TelFriends if you plan publishing private information on your .TEL. If you do, click the Sign Up link in the TelFriends login .

Privacy

Q: I cannot add new Friends.
A: You need to have an active TelFriends account to add friends that can see your private data. By default this feature is inactive, and you only see the default Friend groups and yourself on the Privacy tab. For more details on Friending, see Your Guide to .tel. If you have an active TelFriends account, you can accept friend requests to allow people to access your private data. You cannot proactively invite people to be friends of your .tel, because they need to have a TelFriends account first.

Q: I’m in the Privacy tab and cannot add a new contact to the group.
A: To allow friends in the current group see a contact, click Add inside the table Items in Group and select the contact you wish to add from the list of existing public and private contact items. If you wish to add a completely new contact item to this group, follow the instructions in Your Guide to .tel.

Q: Why does the system only show my contacts in Privacy? What about location, text?
A: Currently, the system only supports encryption of contact information, so your text header and location will always be publicly available. If you do not wish to share your current location, consider not publishing it in your .TEL.

Q: How do I create a private contact in a subfolder?
A: At the moment, only your main domain can store private contacts, so all information in sub-folders is always public. If you wish to hide individual contacts in a sub-folder, consider moving the contact to your main domain or not publishing that information in your .TEL.

Q: How do I make a contact visible to my friends only?
A: Several ways to do it:

(a) In the Dashboard, click edit, go to Advanced tab, and select private specifying the friend group(s) you wish to add the private contact to; you can select multiple items at once.

(b) in the Privacy tab, see the group that you wish to show the contact to, and in Items in Group, select Add. You will see the list of records that are not shown to the current group. Select the one(s) you want, and click save.

Note that the Dashboard shows the record as private after you add it to a Friends group.