Kavoir » Domains

Add Wildcard DNS Subdomain *.example.com in cPanel

Yang Yang — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:12:49 +0000

Lots of people ask this question and most of them probably made the matter complicated by editing the DNS Zone from WHM in the DNS Functions. But they actually should just do it in cPanel which is A LOT easier.

Just log in your cPanel which manages the domain that you want to add support for wildcard (*) subdomains. Go to:

Domains > Subdomains

And enter asterisk * in the Subdomain and choose the domain you need it added to.

Click “Create”.

That’s it. Now you can access your domain from any random subdomain and it will automatically use the A record of the main domain as their own.

.com Renewal Promo Code – VeriSign .com Registry Fee Increases by $0.5

Yang Yang — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 01:08:50 +0000

A quick notification for my readers. As VeriSign is increasing the registry fee of .com by about $0.5 by Jan. 15, 2012, you may want to renew all of your existing .com domains by then. The name registration fee is on a rise ever since the dawn, depending on your personal finance, renewing earlier is probably better that later.

It’s about to be Christmas so do search for “*registrar* renewal promo code”, coupons, etc. for your registrar when you are renewing your names. Dynadot was kind enough to offer a renewal promo code “HOLIDAYRENEWAL” for $0.25 discount off one year renewal of any .com name. It’s the best chance to renew all your names before the prices increase at the beginning of next year (2012).

Currently the best promo code I can find for Godaddy is “cjc795dom” which is $7.95 for .com renewal. Do share in the comments if you have a better find.

Buying a grandfathered .EDU domain?

Yang Yang — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 03:59:05 +0000

Someone approached to sell me a grandfathered .EDU name. I never thought .EDU domain can be traded so I started to research a little bit. Ain’t they owned only by educational institutions of United States?

Turns out .EDU names in existence as of October 29, 2001 were more freely registered and thus many non-educational entities such as individuals and businesses owned them. However, after the management of the .EDU name space were transferred to EDUCAUSE and thus new regulations were introduced on and from October 29, 2001, .EDU names can only be distributed to certified higher educational institutions operating in the United States and cannot be traded or exchanged whatsoever. But the .EDU names created before Oct.29, 2001 remained in the hands of their original registrant. That’s why they are called “grandfathered”. They are out of the current rules but they can still exist.

While you cannot acquire a new .EDU name now – unless you purchase a small local college for couple of millions – can you get a grandfathered .EDU from its previous owner?

The owner / registrant name of the .EDU name must remain unchanged for its lifetime – no matter if it’s a grandfathered .EDU or a .EDU created after Oct. 29, 2001. So is this all a scam or is it really possible to buy a grandfathered .EDU name?

The way to trade a grandfathered .EDU is probably to trade the owner entity. You are not buying the name, instead, you are buying the business entity that owns the .EDU name. I never personally bought such an entity to get any .EDU name so I’m not saying this way would work. From my research, this is definitely a possible way. Quite a few domain name brokers said they knew such sales existed or even engaged in one.

To make sure, I approached the staff at EDUCAUSE.edu and these are the 2 official replies I got:

EDU domains cannot be given, sold, or in any other way transferred to another institution. EDU domains –even those grandfathered – must remain registered to the original registrant.

— Kate, Member Services Representative

Nothing seriously against the idea of obtaining the owner entity to obtain the .edu name. However the second reply from a Senior Policy Director comes much more serious:

Names in the .edu domain are made available to registrants under conditions and policies specified by the U.S. Department of Commerce. In particular they are not "owned" by the registrant and therefore may not be sold or otherwise transferred. The contract included in your most recent message is thus in error in stating "…that this Business Entity is the sole beneficial owner of the domain name xxxxxx.edu, that said domain name is not encumbered in any manner…".

In your original e-mail you said: "Someone approached me to sell me a grandfathered .edu name." Such a sale would be invalid regardless of any attempt to embed that sale within another transaction. EDUCAUSE will not hesitate to disable any .edu name we find to have been sold or otherwise transferred in violation of policy.

— Steven, Senior Policy Director

If you are ever buying a grandfathered .edu name, better make sure to stay low and never let EDUCAUSE knows about the deal. ;)

Best renewal promo code for non .com domains at GoDaddy

Yang Yang — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 02:35:43 +0000

Had a bunch of .info, .net and .org to be renewed yesterday and after searching for quite a while, I was unable to find any promo source code deals better than this one:

gdbb776

It places a 17% discount ($6.99 .info, $7.49 .org and .net) off your cart for domain renewals. I had 17 domains to be renewed yesterday and it saved me about $25. Just thought I’d share with you in case you are going to renew some names.

Good GoDaddy promo codes that are nicely discounted are harder and harder to come by these days, especially for renewals.

Shady GoDaddy: How to cancel private registration for your domain renewals?

Yang Yang — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:25:14 +0000

If you accepted GoDaddy’s offer of the first-year-free private registration service for your domain, you would not be so happy when you are renewing the domain for more years because you will find the private registration is bound to that domain. You can either renew the domain WITH the private registration which costs an extra $9 per year or you can remove the domain from the shopping cart. You are forced to renew it with private registration at $9 per year plus the registration fee ($10 or so) or you cannot renew it at all. Very shady.

No, they don’t have any options to exclude private registrations (Domains By Proxy) when you are renewing the domains that were registered with the free private registration for the first year. The trick is, they don’t have that option on GoDaddy.com. You will have to do it on DomainsByProxy.com.

So how to turn off private domain registrations for renewals at GoDaddy?

For every order of domain registrations with first-year-free private registration services, you will be sent an email containing the login details of DomainsByProxy.com. I found them by searching my email inbox by the phrase "domains by proxy". Chances are you can find a few messages sent from domainsbyproxy.com by the title "Welcome to Domains By Proxy".

Each of the messages is an order of private registrations for one or multiple domains. Open them one by one and look for "User Id" which is a lengthy number that you will use as Customer # or Login Name at https://www.domainsbyproxy.com.

The password is the same with that of your GoDaddy.com account.

When you are logged in, you can see the list of domains that you opted for private registrations by clicking “Domains”. Check the domains you intend to renew (or rather, all of them) and click “Continue”. Select “Yes” and click the Done button or whatever to finish the process.

Now you can get back to GoDaddy and renew your domains without being bothered to purchase additional years of private registration services.

Shame on Godaddy.

Godaddy $7.69 .org domain registration coupon promo code

Yang Yang — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:34:15 +0000

God knows why they have raised the .org registration fee to $14.99. I don’t know if it’s temporary or just the way it will be for a long time to come but it’s outrageous. Fortunately I have found this .org domain registration coupon that got me the domain for just $7.69.

goaorg01a

Almost 50% off. Not bad, so thought should share with you guys. Please comment if you have a better .org promo code for registering .org names at Godaddy. For web hosting, we recommend WiredTree. Use these WiredTree coupons to get extra or discounted packages.

$6.99 GoDaddy .com renewal coupon code

Yang Yang — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:03:19 +0000

A quick deal for my readers. Found this coupon code of GoDaddy that enables you to renew .com domains at just $6.99:

DNF5

Just used it to renew tens of my .com names at $6.99 (plus ICANN fee $0.18) each. If you ever tried to look for one, you’d know it’s not easy to get a $6.99 .com renewal at GoDaddy now. Previously, the best code for .com renewal is this one for $7.39 each.

The only requirement of the code DNF5 is that you renew no less than 5 domains at a time.

Otherwise, you can always find one or two working coupons of GoDaddy with which you can register new .com at $6.99.

2 reasons you should host all static content on a different domain

Yang Yang — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 07:19:19 +0000

That is, to host all static content such as ready-made images, scripts, style sheets on a different domain rather than the primary one that hosts the page of the current URL. For example, if you intend to add static images to the web page located at http://www.example.com/page.html, you should not place the images on www.example.com, instead, put them somewhere else such as example-static.com or static.example.com.

The first reasoning for this is that browsers load web assets one by one or sequentially from a single host. They will not start requesting and downloading the next asset until they are finished with the previous one from the same domain. Therefore, doubling the hosts or domains can accelerate the downloading speed by about 100% because browsers can simultaneously download stuff from 2 different domains.

Another reasoning is that if cookie or session is enabled on your website, the browser would send the session cookie every time it makes a request to the domain, which sort of is useless because it’s static content – the server doesn’t need the cookie at all to serve static content such as images. It’s not only a waste of bandwidth but also a waste of communication time. To avoid this, serve all static content from a domain that is not cookie enabled. For instance, if you have set cookie with example.com, you can host all static content at static.example.com, however, if you have enabled cookie by *.example.com instead of just example.com, you will need to register a whole different domain to host the static content to steer clear of the useless overhead.

Not much for a small site, but this would be a major improvement regarding user experience for established, popular websites.

Cool Suffixes and Prefixes for Brandable Domain Name Registration

Yang Yang — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:31:34 +0000

With all the good ones taken, branding the common keywords / keyphrases may be a better approach in this era of web. Below is a list of short but sweet prefixes and suffixes that I have come up with and that you can use to brand the generic keywords to have an available domain name for registration:

#edge
very#
orbit#
#orbit
#scape
#walk
much#
quick#
rapid#
almost#
#hub
#pro
#book
#zilla
#direct
direct#
#wise
smart#
#guide
#kids
#kid
only#
super#
crazy#
#worth
#worthY
#away
#pulse
#hour
#time
#ever
ever#
#now
#web
#den
#world
#spot
#board
#station
#advisor
next#
find#
#plex
#ground
#academy
#school
#library
#desk
#tutor
#city
#park
#shop
#professor
#source
your#
wild#
insane#
#link
#pages
#page
#paradise
#radar
#planet
#space
#sea
#forest
#ocean
all#
#chat
#talk
#workshop
#muse
#brain
#talent
#stop
#site
#expert
#zone
#line
live#
killer#
#truck
#train
#reloaded
#mania
#mart
get#
#cluster
#junk
#yard
#junkyard
#junction
#ready
#mind
#lounge
know#
#bar
#house
kick#
rock#
#club
#chief
#index
#week
#one
one#
#path
search#
#search
#pedia
#spy
#mall
#central
#articles
#pool
#well
well#
#vision
#user
#land
#watch
#mag
#journal
#note
#mill
#factory
dear#
holy#
#depot
#max
max#
#queen
inside#
mighty#
#beat
#sense
#fact
#data
#eden
dot#
#ark
#clip
just#
#scout
#master
a#
b#
c#
d#
e#
f#
g#
h#
i#
j#
k#
l#
m#
n#
o#
p#
q#
r#
s#
t#
u#
v#
w#
x#
y#
z#

Simply copy and paste these into a text editor, then search and replace ‘#’ with the generic keywords you want. Copy and paste the results into the bulk domain search tool to search and register the available ones that look nice and brandable.

More prefixes and suffixes

#house
#central
#point
#home
#place
#garden
#site
#spot
#park
#dome
#bay
#web
#net
#cave
#base
#heaven
#portal
#world
#camp
#network
#county
#street
#city
#alley
#depot
#valley
#now
#resources
#tools
#source
#review
#system
#book
#guide
#talk
#data
#vision
#load
#box
#focus
#beat
#voice
#share
#cafe
#nexus
#zone
#sight
#link
#lab
#insight
#vine
#board
#flow
#signs
#network
#wire
#cast
#ville
#nation
#egg
#cove
#news
#today
#future
#fun
#watch
#story
#fever
#coast
#side
#road
#heat
#bite
#insider
#club
#connect
the#
my#
i#
#me
we#
you#
e#
top#
pro#
best#
super#
ultra#
all#
cyber#
simply#
free#
1st#
first#
meta#
re#
metro#
urban#
head#
hit#
front#
techno#
ever#
rush#
think#
solo#
radio#
vip#
hot#
smart#
#smart
cool#
hot#
fast#
fresh#
sleek#
first#
daily#
sharp#
light#
classic#
fast#
great#
quick#
ubi#
bis#
ad#
ambi#
inter#
liber#
mono#
poli#
tele#
omni#
exo#
extra#
hyper#
hypo#
intro#
proto#
intra#
micro#
macro#
multi#
neo#
iso#
mono#
#io
#virtus
#ego
#vox
ex#
#ex
#ideo
#novo
novo#
#novus
#pax
#rex
#velox
#verus
#vivo
#nova
pico#
nano#
micro#
milli#
kilo#
mega#
giga#
tera#
peta#
aero#
cosmo#
deca#
eco#
geo#
hex#
oxy#
uni#
poly#
#media
#direct
#access
#ez
#easy
#info
#interactive
#biz
#buzz
#bit
#byte
#up
#tech
#on
#out
#pulse
#venture
#trend
#life
#retro
secret#
#secret

Some of them can be used as both prefix and suffix, some of them can be used as only prefix or only suffix.

Commmon 3-letter Words

the#
and#
for#
are#
but#
not#
you#
all#
any#
#can
her#
was#
one#
our#
#out
#day
get#
has#
#him
his#
how#
#man
new#
#now
old#
see#
two#
#way
#who
#boy
did#
its#
let#
put#
say#
she#
#too
use#
#dad
#mom
#act
#bar
#car
#dew
eat#
#far
#gym
hey#
#ink
#jet
#key
#log
mad#
#nap
odd#
#pal
#ram
saw#
#vet
#wed
yap#
#zoo

How to get a web address (top level domain)?

Yang Yang — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:13:15 +0000

There are millions of websites online, each of which has its own unique web address or domain. It’s what the visitors, us, use to type in the browser address bar and go to the site. It universally identifies a website on the web. And it’s something EVERYONE can have.

Yes, you can have one too, in just a minute or even less. You completely own the top level website address in regards to legal terms. It’s officially a piece of the online real estate.

All right, for those of you who can’t wait to own your first web address such as SuperHero.com or Jessica.com, here’s how you can get a domain name:

Navigate to one of the best domain registrars. You may first register an account with them by Create an Account.
Search for a web address or domain by typing it in the “Search For A Domain” text box. For example, mybestfriends.com, and click “Go!”.
The system then prompts with all the results showing the availability of the web address which end in a variety of TLD (Top Level Domain). The domain of your choice may or may not be available with regards to its generic-ness because others may very probably have registered and owned it.
You will also see .com is unavailable the most of time, so you may choose to go with other top level domains such as .net, .org or .us.
After you have made the decision and selected one or more of the web addresses listed by checking the check box before them, you will click “Add to Cart” to process your order of the web addresses. At the same time, you may consider adding domain privacy which basically prevent others from knowing your ownership of the domain.
The web address is now placed in your cart. Click “Checkout” to check out.
If you have not registered an account with them, now is the time. After you have successfully created the account, you will be able to pay for the web address / top level domain of your choice.
An order confirmation email should be sent to your email inbox to inform you of the your successful purchase of the domain name.

Well, if you have followed these steps to this point, you have had your first ever website address! You may create a website for it and spread the address to your friends! They can visit your website by typing the web address in the browser address bar!

Bulk Domain Name Availability Checker Tool to Batch Search Available Domains

Yang Yang — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:34:05 +0000

Someone asks me via contact form how to check potentially hundreds of domains for availability at once, as it’d be a huge waste of time to check them one by one. For example, when you need to check if these 50 domain names are still register-able: californiainsurance.com, newyorkinsurance.com, virginiainsurance.com, … and so forth, you need a bulk search tool for available domains.

While an AJAX whois tool gives instant results for all major TLDs, a bulk domain name search tool queries for the availability of all the domains at once in larger volumes that’s preferably no less than 100 in a batch.

Dynadot free bulk domain search is just the tool you need in a situation like this. You can generate a list of most wanted domains, in 100, and input them batch by batch to their domain bulk checker.

Register an account at Dynadot, head to: Domain Names –> Bulk Search and you should be able to check 100 domains at a time.

How to Transfer / Move WordPress Blog from One Domain to Another

Yang Yang — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:13:34 +0000

Basically, the root URL of your blog which is your domain or subdomain is changing here. Though this doesn’t seem like a sane decision considering the huge SEO impact that might fall upon your site but with HTTP 301 permanent redirection, this can still make sense in some situations.

Assume you won’t change the details of the WordPress database connection, then there’d be no need to change or modify any PHP files at all. Just the database tables and related values concerning the URLs.

The idea is to find all table field values containing the string ‘olddomain.com‘ which is your old domain and change it to the new domain ‘newdomain.com‘. Follow me:

Copy all the WordPress PHP program files from the old directory to the new one which the new domain is pointed at.
Connect to WordPress database by phpMyAdmin or plain mysql command or whatever you are familiar with. But this example will only go with phpMyAdmin.
In phpMyAdmin, at the database level, click ‘Search‘ -> ‘Select All‘ -> Search for ‘olddomain.com‘ -> Click ‘Go‘. In most cases, there are just 2 tables that need to be modified accordingly: wp_posts and wp_options.
Click ‘Browse’ to look for records with the string ‘olddomain.com‘ in them.
For ‘wp_options’, edit each record and find all occurrences of the old string ‘olddomain.com‘ and modify it to ‘newdomain.com‘. Click ‘Go‘ to update.
For ‘wp_posts’, you can leave the guid field intact or update it with the new domain string but it doesn’t matter much. The hard part is to update the post content of all posts and replace all occurrences of the old domain string to the new one. You can get all this done by the following SQL query: UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'olddomain.com', 'newdomain.com')

Now you should be set, fire up your browser and navigate to your blog at the new domain and check everything out to see if it’s working properly.

The best .com renewal coupon at Godaddy

Yang Yang — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:11:33 +0000

Update: Just found a great renewal coupon code of GoDaddy for .com renewal at just $6.99. Simply use the code DNF5. However, a minimum of 5 domains is required to get the maximum discount.

Searched all day yesterday for a $6.99 .com renewal coupon to use for my 30 or so .com domains at Godaddy.

No luck.

Until I found something at this thread at namepros. But it’s just $7.39 (not including the ICANN fee) each for .com renewals with this code:

DNF2

The deal is not bad if not the best. I’m still keeping an eye on any working $6.99 .com renewal codes, if any one of you happens to have one, please kindly share it in the comments. Thanks!

Dynadot Affiliate Program Review – Not Worth the While

Yang Yang — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:28:21 +0000

I joined Dynadot at the commencement of .tel domains and tried my luck to get some domainers to register a domain with them.

Maybe it’s because they just don’t care about expanding via affiliates, the system might be a little buggy or not so affiliate friendly in that once the referred friend signed up an account with them, even if they have clicked through your affiliate link to register the domains at Dynadot, the newly registered domain and its commission will not be credited to you at all.

Therefore, make sure you send your friend or site visitors the affiliate link before they register the account with Dynadot. So, basically, they should register their account through your affiliate link. The other way won’t work for sure, but still I’m not sure if it works in this way.

Feels a little fishy with Dynadot domain registration affiliate program and totally not worth the while.

DreamHost Review: Pros and Cons plus Uptime Charts

Yang Yang — Sat, 09 May 2009 05:59:22 +0000

I’ve been DreamHost since 2006 and that’s more than 3 years of hosting experience with them on a shared plan ($9.95 / month). For those who’d prefer scanning instead of reading, I’ll sum up my points in short lists:

Pros

Affordable price with generous offerings in disk storage and monthly transfer.
Full pack of features – everything you can imagine for LAMP websites, they are there for you to access.
10 years of operating their own servers makes them extremely technical and the support is always to the point by knowledgeable staff.
Proprietary control panel enables you to do everything without a hassle. Could be a Con though, as it’s too easy to use and somewhat addictive, once you get used to it, you’d be reluctant to switch.
A lot of features are only found on DreamHost such as control panel API, Google Apps (I love it!), Jabber IM, Media Streaming and much more that are all automated and even a novice hoster can take advantage of.
Open discussion forums.
Very well documented wiki specifically for their users with detailed instructions to do everything.

Cons

The average uptime is approximately 99.7% for shared plans – just so so.
Sometimes it’s rather slow accessing your site. Blame the server load and amount of websites hosted on a single server. You can feel that you are in a shared environment without a doubt.
I’ve experienced from 1 minute to 20 hours of response time from DreamHost email support. On average, it’s roughly 5 hours.
Their referral program does work and the 2nd tier 5% forever rewards may successfully lock you with them “forever” because once you leave DreamHost, you leave the lifetime stream of 5% referral rewards. Pretty bad ass, huh?

DreamHost Server Stats Charts

All charts and data are gathered and provided by basicstate.com who pings (Spenser from basicstate.com points out that it’s not just pinging but also a full HTTP pull of the page) one of my sites hosted with DreamHost (shared plan) at 15-minute intervals.

DreamHost Uptime (shared)

DreamHost Average Response Time (shared)

DreamHost Total Response Time (shared)

Conclusion

DreamHost (I can only speak of their shared plans which I have experience with) is absolutely worth the money if you are hosting hobbyist or personal sites that are not so mission critical. As a result of their sophisticated technical background, the hosting environment gives you as much freedom as you need yet balanced well in security and overall server well-being. It’s a paradise for web developers and non-technical users at the same time.

I’d especially recommend DreamHost to beginner webmasters for its affordable price and pack of features – you literally can’t find anything that’s offered by competitive hosting companies not in DreamHost’s menu. And, while you can do everything from the control panel, you can still utilize SSH to do advanced stuff. That said, the biggest drawback of DreamHost becoming a fantastic host is the reliability and performance issue that haunts its shared users.

DreamHost will be a terrific journey for you to learn and grow until you have to find a more solid pie to ensure your websites. I might go with their Private Server (Their way of VPS, a little more pricey than their shared plans in my opinion) plans soon, but with the same amount of money why don’t I go with another hosting company and try them out and in addition, to have a few different C-class IPs for the sake of SEO. ;)

Shameless Self Promotion: $60 DreamHost Coupon Code

Well, if you think my review is helpful and feel like going ahead, I’d very much appreciate it if you could use coupon CASH60 to sign up at DreamHost. It gives you an instant $60 discount with all yearly plans.

Kavoir » Domains

Add Wildcard DNS Subdomain *.example.com in cPanel

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.com Renewal Promo Code – VeriSign .com Registry Fee Increases by $0.5

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Buying a grandfathered .EDU domain?

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Best renewal promo code for non .com domains at GoDaddy

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Shady GoDaddy: How to cancel private registration for your domain renewals?

So how to turn off private domain registrations for renewals at GoDaddy?

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Godaddy $7.69 .org domain registration coupon promo code

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$6.99 GoDaddy .com renewal coupon code

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2 reasons you should host all static content on a different domain

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Cool Suffixes and Prefixes for Brandable Domain Name Registration

More prefixes and suffixes

Commmon 3-letter Words

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How to get a web address (top level domain)?

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Bulk Domain Name Availability Checker Tool to Batch Search Available Domains

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How to Transfer / Move WordPress Blog from One Domain to Another

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The best .com renewal coupon at Godaddy

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Dynadot Affiliate Program Review – Not Worth the While

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DreamHost Review: Pros and Cons plus Uptime Charts

Pros

Cons

DreamHost Server Stats Charts

DreamHost Uptime (shared)

DreamHost Average Response Time (shared)

DreamHost Total Response Time (shared)

Conclusion

Shameless Self Promotion: $60 DreamHost Coupon Code

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