Progress made on the island’s online platform for registering Bermudian domains has been highlighted by the Department of Registry General.

It comes in the wake of sites temporarily going offline on Sunday, said to be caused by late renewal by internet service providers.

The department also responded to customer complaints about the new platform used by the registrar, Bermuda Network Information Centre.

Bermuda NIC was originally scheduled to move to its improved new platform on August 1.

Clients had to be notified after the switch was delayed — with the new portal going live on December 1.

However, with teething problems upon the launch of the system, the department “identified issues and worked to resolve them quickly”.

Clients were told on December 7 to reset their passwords and given instructions on how to do so — although some said they never got the details, and had to be sent temporary passwords to change later.

The details came after the manager of a service registering and renewing Bermudian “.bm” domains this week criticised the Bermuda NIC platform as clumsy and outdated.

The source took aim at the requirement for clients to call the registrar and give their credit-card details down the phone, which was branded a security risk.

The department said yesterday that “one of the significant changes in the new system is the payment process, which no longer needs to be done over the phone”.

Card information, previously kept in their accounts “to process auto-renewals”, are no longer kept in the new system.

“As a safer option, customers wishing to have their account automatically renewed must add the necessary funds for processing.”

The department said that while the practice was not encouraged, customers were still able to “call in for assistance renewing a domain”.

“While the new system's functionality and security have improved, the Registry General department recognises adjustment periods as standard with any new system and apologises for any inconvenience caused to our customers.”

The department thanked clients for their feedback on the new portal, which can be shared by e-mailing dnsmanager@gov.bm.