Author: Comunicació

LGBTI Centre: a pioneering space for sexual and gender diversity

Posted on by Comunicació

Located at Carrer del Comte Borrell, 22, the Barcelona LGBTI Centre is a leading facility in the sphere of LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersexual) and uses the .barcelona domain as part of its communication strategy.

The centre offers guidance, advice and direct support, as well as giving a voice to artistic expression and collective action. To ensure all types of assistance for its users, the centre has specialists in psychology, social work, law, healthcare, community management and more. It also has its own protocol for tackling LGBTI-phobic aggression, in conjunction with municipal services such as the Office for Non-Discrimination, the Barcelona Social Emergency and Urgent Care Centre and the Prosecution Service for Hate Crimes.

Cultural and awareness programme

The centre is also a place for artistic expression and standing up for the historical memory of the LGBTI movement. To this end, it hosts exhibitions, discussion cycles, lectures, debates, performing arts shows, screenings and reading clubs, details of which can be found at centrelgtbi.barcelona. One example is the “Corporalitats” cycle being held until the end of April, offering a series of activities to explore bodily diversity in all its joyful resilience, such as the photography exhibition “Les corps incorruptibles”, by Emilie Hallard, a declaration of feminist, queer and anti-racist love. Besides these photos, the centre is also offering mini-videos of the documentary “Famílies Trans*”, by Mar Llop, a project giving a voice to 29 families bringing up children according to their felt gender.

Over 1,200 square metres of multi-purpose space

With its 1,254 square metres of space, the LGBTI Centre offers a welcome and information area, a display area with a regular programme open to all, an auditorium with a capacity for 100 people, a healthcare area, a family area and five rooms for meetings, counselling, training and workshops.

The centre is managed by the Platform for Catalan LGBTI Organisations, the federation that brings together various LGBTI rights entities. Their volunteer work and initiatives give the centre vitality.

A stronger position for .barcelona as a city domain in 2021

Posted on by Comunicació

Last year meant a year of consolidation for the .barcelona domain, with the figure of 4,175 renewals similar to previous years. In contrast, the number of new domain registrations reached 786. The overall number of .barcelona domains stands at 5,183, with a renewal rate of 83.06%.

Various new registrations stand out in 2021. For instance, the virtual shop window for neighbourhood commerce bcnmarket.barcelona, sportshub.barcelona and alimentaciosostenible.barcelona.  These three sites provide support for commerce, sustainable food and sport.

Having a .barcelona domain helps get projects off the ground which are beneficial to the city. The income from .barcelona is also reinvested to create projects such as elmeucomerç.barcelona, which has the goal of helping neighbourhood shops and businesses go digital. The establishments that signed up to the programme got a new .barcelona domain through a simple free process. This is a way for shops and businesses to link their digital identity with the city.

A domain open to all

Barcelona became the latest city to set up its own domain in March 2016, when it launched .barcelona. All organisations, companies, individuals and administrations with ties to the city of Barcelona and its catchment area, or who engage in activity there, can register using the city’s domain.

The .barcelona domain is part of the international association geoTLD, which provides it with greater representation within the sector. The community is made up of over a million active top-level geographical domains, such as those using .berlin, .paris, .london and .tokyo. The geoTLD Group works in the interest of geographical domains to promote local identities and disseminate their values.

The idea of a link with a large city such as Barcelona is a key part of the goals of the .barcelona domain, as is backing for city projects and getting on the Catalan capital’s digital map. Users value the fact they can be identified with Barcelona, whether this is for others to find them of because they are identified with the city’s attributes.

What do you know about the Barcelona Ring Roads LEZ?

Posted on by Comunicació

Vehicles which pollute the most have been unable to access the low emission zone (LEZ) delimited by the city’s ring roads (Rondes) since 2020. The area covers over 95 square kilometres and circulation restrictions apply to the most pollutant vehicles with the aim of protecting the atmosphere, people’s health and the environment.

The LEZ covers the entire municipality of Barcelona (except for Zona Franca and the neighbourhood of Vallvidrera, el Tibidabo i les Planes), the municipality of Hospitalet de Llobregat and part of the municipalities of Cornellà de Llobregat, Esplugues de Llobregat and Sant Adrià de Besòs.

Users can keep up with all the information relating to the Barcelona Ring Roads LEZ on the project’s website at zbe.barcelona, which uses the city domain to provide details and the latest news on this programme. The site includes information such as which vehicles are affected by the restrictions, details on the regulations, applying for daily authorisations for the most pollutant vehicles to circulate and information on what is being done in terms of sustainable mobility.

Reduction in journeys by vehicles that pollute the most

Since the low emission zone was announced, the most pollutant vehicles have been replaced. These are vehicles which are not suitable to be issued with an environmental rating badge from the Directorate General for Traffic (DGT). In three years, journeys made by cars and motorbikes which pollute the most have dropped, with 550,000 fewer journeys.

At the same time, between the first half of 2020 and February 2021, the volume of vehicles circulating within the LEZ without the environmental badge from the DGT fell from between 9 and 10% to between 3.5 and 4.5%.

Moratorium for vans, lorries and coaches being replaced

The circulation of vehicles without the DGT badge, namely lorries and small coaches (N2, N3 and M2) affected by the end of the moratorium on 31 December, is currently allowed as long as vehicle owners sign a declaration of their intention to acquire a new vehicle. This declaration involves a commitment to renew the vehicle by 30 June 2022. With the moratoriums now over, the hope is that the volume of vehicles circulating in the Ring Roads LEZ without the DGT environmental badge will drop to below 1%.

Vehicles with the following badges can continue to circulate in the LEZ with no restrictions from working Mondays to Fridays this year, between 7 am and 8 pm:

  • Yellow badge (B)
  • Green badge (C)
  • Eco badge (Eco)
  • 0 badge (Zero emissions)

Domains and subdomains: what they are and how they differ

Posted on by Comunicació

Internet jargon includes some concepts which are very similar and can cause confusion when it comes to defining them. Two of these are domain and subdomain. What defines them and where do they come into the picture?

We are already familiar with the domain, which is the name we are known by online, a name which is easy to remember and easy to write, associated with a physical internet IP address where our page is housed. A subdomain is basically a domain which forms part of a larger one.

Contrary to what one might think, a subdomain is not a subsection of our domain. For instance, if the domain name is domain.barcelona, the subdomain would not be domain.barcelona/actualitat. That would be a page within a domain. A subdomain would be something like faqs.domain.barcelona.

A subdomain is a new independent website, but without the need to create another domain. It can have its own subsections and function on its own.

Why create a subdomain?

There are various advantages to creating a subdomain. The first is that different sections can be organised completely independently of the website content published on the main domain. This is the main purpose of a subdomain: to separate the different sections of a website and organise content more effectively.

Another reason is to avoid loading your main domain up with information. In practice it is another domain with its own images, extensions and pages. This makes browsing quicker.

Finally, another notable advantage is that you won’t have to pay for another domain. Many registration companies include unlimited subdomains in the price of the domain.

How do I create a subdomain?

First of all, you need to think about the name you want to give it. The shorter and more descriptive it is, the better. For instance, if it is to host an online store, it is best to call it shop.domain.barcelona, so users can see where they are straight away.

Creating a subdomain is not complicated. On the control panel offered by the registration company for your domain there should be a relatively simple option allowing you to create one. Either way, don’t hesitate to check with the technical department and enjoy the advantages of having a subdomain for your .barcelona.

How to protect your brand on the internet

Posted on by Comunicació

Being present on the internet is vital when it comes to opening a business, whether we’re giving information on our products and services, explaining who we are or even selling online. Because of this, as soon as we set our minds on starting a project, we need to think about registering the domain we will use as our name on the internet. This is because the domain name will be the one people know us by online. These names are globally unique and there can be no duplicates. Users identify the domain with the business and/or products and services being offered. Because of this it’s essential to choose a good domain name which matches each profile. If you’re unsure where to begin, here are some tips to help you get started.

What many people are unaware of, is that while we might have a registered business name, this does not guarantee the right to use that same name online. This makes it very important to check first to see if the name is available, in other words that nobody else has taken it, and to register it in our company’s name as soon as possible.

It’s also very important to bear in mind the date that the domain registration period expires, as if we don’t renew it within a few days the domain will become available again and anyone could register it.

When it comes to protecting a brand on the internet, it is common to register other domains which are similar, or which have other terminations. This way we avoid many searches taking users to other websites, and we prevent other parties from registering them in a bid to harm our brand. For instance, if our website is lamevabotiga.barcelona, the best way to protect our brand would be to register labotiga.barcelona or latevabotiga.barcelona.

This might initially seem an unnecessary investment, as perhaps we only use one or two of the domains we register, but it is a minor cost compared to the headaches it could save us. Shielding our internet brand is as important or even more important than physically registering it.

“Barcelona is jazz during the festival, so there’s nothing better than jazz.barcelona to get that across”

Posted on by Comunicació

We spoke to Agustín Borlán from TheProject, the company organising the Voll-Damm Barcelona Jazz Festival. Borlán is in charge of communications for Amics del Jazz, the festival’s loyalty collective, and is also part of the communications team.

Tell us a bit about the history of the Barcelona Jazz Festival

Crumbs! That’s not easy considering we’re into the 53rd edition. The festival started on 3 November 1966, with a concert by The Dave Brubeck Quartet at the Palau de la Música Catalana, and since then it’s only failed to be held in Barcelona on two occasions. The main universal jazz figures have taken part, from Duke Ellington to Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Nina Simone, Jimmy Smith, Ornette Coleman and many more. The local scene has always featured heavily in the programme, which has witnessed the rise of greats such as Andrea Motis and the Sant Andreu Jazz Band. It includes a globally unique cycle of masterclasses from the participating artists themselves, and in 2008 a book was published with the history of the festival, marking its first forty editions.

How important is digitalisation in your business? What channels do you use to communicate with clients?

A sector like ours needs strong connections with the digital framework, as this is basically where ticket sales happen. Traditional channels have less and less impact on the public, hence the shift towards digital publicity. Besides our website and mailshots, which would be the first line of contact, the festival’s social media offer an excellent means of reaching our target audience and also allow for paid advertising campaigns to broaden our follower base and sales. In this respect, investments through Google in both research and display become important tools for promotion and marketing.

What is the bond between the Jazz Festival and Barcelona?

The festival collaborates with institutions here such as the Conservatori del Liceu and the Palau Robert, which is hosting the second edition of the DO Jazz Cat cycle this year and features emerging talent. The concerts are not just held in one place. They take place at big venues such as L’Auditori and the Palau de la Música Catalana, as well as small-format places such as the Harlem Jazz Club and the Milano Jazz Club. The Jazz & Food event, which was a big hit before the pandemic, offered people a free-access family event full of swing and gastronomy. The festival has also offered activities around the library network, at the Filmoteca de Catalunya and other public spaces, taking the big jazz festival out into different corners of the city.

The domain chosen is .barcelona. Why did you opt for .barcelona, what advantages does it give you?

Obviously, that domain didn’t exist in 1966 and neither did any others. For a long time we had more of an ‘international’ domain, but we didn’t hold back when .barcelona came along as the brand was much clearer and geolocated. At the beginning it was a risky move, as changing after so many years prompted certain confusion because of its simplicity, but now everybody agrees it was a good choice. The advantages are obvious, from the direct link between the festival and the city to a more compact, direct and simple brand in the realm of publicity. Barcelona is jazz during the festival, so there’s nothing better than jazz.barcelona to get that across.

Sustainable food’s got the dot!

Posted on by Comunicació

The Seasons Menu offers ideas and recipes to foster a healthy and sustainable diet which is good for people and good for the planet, at the same time backing the local economy and the city’s bars and restaurants. The project is being implemented within the context of Barcelona’s role as the World Sustainable Food Capital, an initiative offering over ninety projects and sustainable food policies in a programme which has been running throughout the year.

Sustainable and seasonal local ingredients provide the base for the new menu, designed by three hotel schools and the chef Pere Carrió, from the restaurant Gat Blau. The winter menu, published on the .barcelona website for Sustainable Food, defends the fight against food waste and backs the use of local seasonal produce to help reduce the impact of our food system. The recipes for this edition have been developed by Pere Carrió, chef at the restaurant Gat Blau, the Escola d’Hoteleria i Turisme, operated by the University of Barcelona (CETT), the Escola Superior d’Hostaleria i Turisme Jesuïtes Sarrià – Sant Gervasi and the Escola Superior d’Hostaleria de Barcelona (ESHOB).

The winter menu rounds off the Seasons Menu for this year, which began with the spring menu, courtesy of the chef Carme Ruscalleda. The recipe can be tasted at over 160 restaurants in Barcelona and around Catalonia which have signed up to take part in the Seasons Menu.

The Sustainable Food website also offers other recipes which are recommended as you can make them at home, along with information on healthy eating using seasonal produce, ideas for looking after the planet, workshops, activities and resources for promoting sustainable food.

Shops and businesses in Nou Barris are dot Barcelona

Posted on by Comunicació

A new project promoted by the .barcelona domain and the district of Nou Barris will help shops and businesses go digital in this part of the city. The initiative forms part of the social programme by the .barcelona domain, whereby all the funds raised are reinvested to create new projects with a social impact.

Thanks to the project https://www.domini.barcelona/en/elmeucomerc/, shops and businesses in Nou Barris wishing to take part will be able to get their new website published with the .barcelona domain through a quick and easy free process. Registering their .barcelona domain also links them to city values such as enterprise, innovation, proximity and diversity. Their web paths will also be included on the route map and promoted on the communication channels for the .barcelona digital community.

How to take part?

The promotion concludes at the end of December and is open to shops and businesses forming part of commerce networks in the district of Nou Barris, until the limit of 50 establishments for the first edition is reached. Registrations will be accepted in order of reception, and if the offer is oversubscribed the promotors will consider the option of a waiting list for establishments to be included in a new edition of the initiative.

To access the promotion, go to https://www.domini.barcelona/en/elmeucomerc/ for full information and the terms and conditions for taking part. The final step of the registration process is completed on the website for the Nominalia registration company, which is collaborating with the promotion and is tasked with creating the new website.

What will the new website be like?

The site will consist of a single page with vertical navigation and four sections: Who we are, What we do, Where we are and Contact. It will be connected with the establishment’s social media and feature a QR code, a contact form and the option of locating the business on a map. In addition, the promotion includes free registration of the domain for the first year, three email addresses, help with queries, online training to update the website, drafting of legal texts and more.

What’s the difference between an https domain and an http one?

Posted on by Comunicació

When you browse the internet you’ve probably noticed that some addresses start with http and others with https. This single extra letter means more than it might seem, as it is used to distinguish between two communication protocols.

What’s http?

Firstly, we should define http. The letters stand for HyperText Transfer Protocol. Without going into a lengthy technical explanation, this is the most common method of exchanging information online and is used for our browser to communicate with the server which is hosting the information we’re looking at.

Http is a stateless protocol, as it doesn’t house information and handles each information request as an independent transaction, without taking into account previous requests. For instance, http does not take into account something as important as cookies, which we find on practically all websites and which are stored as a way of recognising the previous activity of the browser.

Even though there have been various versions of the http protocol, the most commonly used continues to be http/1.1, from June 1999. The World Wide Web has changed a lot since then. For example, financial transactions are now the order of the day, meaning that the http communication protocol which was safe twenty years ago no longer provides sufficient protection for information sent online.

What’s https?

The need for greater security in the exchange of information led to the creation of https (HyperText Tranfser Protocol Secure). The final ‘S’ says it all here, as https is the secure version of http.

This new communication protocol combines the HHTP and SSL/TS protocols so that the transmission of data between the end user and the client is more secure. To achieve this, the protocol uses an encrypted connection meaning that the information is practically undecipherable to a third party.

Difference between http and https

Https was initially geared towards online commerce and banking but is gradually becoming a standard protocol for the internet.

Why is https gaining in popularity? Basically, because while information on a website with http can easily be intercepted by a user with bad intentions, this is much more complicated with an https website.

Nearly all websites today have a contact form, where users can fill in their personal details. This alone makes an https website worthwhile. Another benefit is that browsers place high value on security and are quick to warn you if the website you’re visiting is not safe. Consequently, if you have an http site it’s going to get fewer users over time, or fewer who feel comfortable visiting it.

How do I change my http website to https?

To switch a site from http to https all you need is an SSL certificate. You can request it from your hosting company, or if your site is designed with a website builder such as WordPress or Prestashop you can download the corresponding plug-ins.

This small gesture will make your .barcelona website more secure and also generate a sense of security among its visitors.

Cities that have got the dot: .stockholm

Posted on by Comunicació

We’re launching a new section at .barcelona looking at other cities with their own domain. One of the best known examples is Stockholm, which in just a few years has managed to make .stockholm the domain for all websites linked to the city council in the Swedish capital. A fine example of the use and implementation of a city domain.

We spoke about the .stockholm domain in an interview with Marcelle Abou Haidar Johansson, head of projects at the Department for Communication at Stockholm City Council.

Marcelle, what is your role within the .stockholm organisation?

Before becoming a project manager with the Department for Communication at Stockholm City Council, I worked with the domain register for the .se and .nu domains. Thanks to this prior knowledge, in 2016 I was asked to join the Department for Communication at the City Council to manage the project launch for the TLD .stockholm.

Since then I’ve been working to implement the TLD in network communications, as well as the updating and development of new websites for Stockholm City Council.

The .stockholm user profile is exclusively institutional, although it will gradually be opened up for other private users. What profiles do you think will be the most interested in using the domain?

As we had an “internal launch” with .stockholm only being used for the city’s organisation, we hoped this would give the TLD an identity status of belonging to Stockholm. As a result, I think the domain will be of more interest to businesses and organisations whose identity is strongly linked to the city of Stockholm.

Over these few years we’ve had various enquiries from small and medium-sized businesses in the city who wanted to be able to register a .stockholm domain. Judging by this, we think this will be the profile with the greatest interest in the domain.

What values for the city of Stockholm are the most recognisable for users of the domain?

Since we introduced the new .stockholm websites, the domain represents more advanced and modern technology which is better suited to users and to web accessibility. This comes in addition to a strong link with the city of Stockholm.

Can you explain the most characteristic success story for the .stockholm domain?

Personally, I love the work we’ve done with the main website for the city’s organisation. It’s a multi-site where various smaller sites converge both visually and technically. Each of these sites is for a specific service offered by the city. For instance, a nursery school (förskola in Swedish), a home for the elderly, business services etc. They all have their own .stockholm domain. This really helps with communication about a specific service. To use one of these examples, if we want people to enrol their children at a nursery school we direct them to förskola.stockholm. There we provide all the necessary information on how to enrol, along with everything else relating to that service.

This represents a change compared to the structure for our former website, where all the information was grouped together in the same place with a tree structure. That meant over 3,000 pages in the end, making it pretty difficult to find the information you were looking for. Even direct links were longer. The new format is much more direct and easier to understand.

What’s your go-to city domain and why?

The first two websites we created, förskola.stockholm (pre-school) and äldreomsorg.stockholm (elderly people), served as a way of testing the new structure and are the sites which citizens have been using the longest. Because of this we’re very fond of them, plus the fact they’re the most popular.

That said, my favourites are äldreomsorg.stockholm and motionera.stockholm. Firstly, because I worked personally on the conceptualisation and launch of both sites, but also because the result was a big improvement on the way users accessed the information before. They’re also very pleasing visually and the domains are spot on in what they communicate. This is one of the main reasons I love working at Stockholm City Council with the .stockholm domain.

How did you decide that the .stockholm domain would be exclusively for institutional use?

It started by chance. There are certain laws and regulations that prohibit the City Council from charging for or making any financial gain from a service unless this is decided on by the City Council itself or through one of its companies. As the application period for ownership of the .stockholm domain was shorter than the time it would take to make a decision over it, the team working on the .stockholm domain application at that time decided that it would only be put to institutional use.

Naturally, the plan was to open it up to the general public later. Even so, now that we’re using it this way it seems very natural to us and the best decision for the city of Stockholm.

How did the process go to switch all the council websites from .se to .stockholm?

The heaviest part of the work was to turn Stockholm.se into various smaller websites with .stockholm domains. This process was quite a challenge at many points. The biggest thing was the work prior to the change, considering that each municipal service is decentralised and most of them have their own communication staff and managers. In most cases, our central communications office came up against the fear of informing the rest of the municipal organisations that we wanted to change all the domains of one Sweden’s biggest websites.

Our website consultancy agency also had little knowledge of how to switch to a TLD that had never been used before. This meant they were also very cautious and reticent to start with.

But speaking to other people in the domain names sector, observing the experiences of other cities, regions and brands to see how they worked with their domains, helped us to draft an action plan for change.

The thing that concerned us most was losing traffic from search engines, which roughly accounted for 60% of all the traffic to the former website. In our preliminary research we reached the conclusion that the most important thing was to make sure that all our visitors would continue to find what they were looking for. Each of the pages from the old site were therefore assigned a new page and a new website. As we made an effort to eliminate unnecessary text and clean up the existing content, the result was that at times 10 or even 20 pages were redirected to a single page of the new website. We had 301 redirections from old links!

As we expected, in the first few months we dropped in terms of SEO, but later recovered. We also launched the mini independent websites one by one and linked them all together. The first two sites on pre-school and elderly people thus helped with later websites as they had achieved good positioning.

As a complement to this work, we’re changing other city domains (besides stockholm.se) to the new .stockholm. This work is still ongoing, but is simpler now as we have got past the heavier work at the outset.

Do people identify the .stockholm domain with Stockholm City Council? Do you think that’s a positive change?

I’d like to be able to say yes straight away, but I honestly think there are two types of people: those that take an interest and pay attention to domain names and those who simply want to reach the information they need. The former do look at the URL and identify .stockholm with the City Council. The latter probably haven’t even realised we’ve changed the domain, even if they use it every day. This group is bigger and perhaps the most important reason behind our good positioning in search engines, because without them they might not ever find us.

Generally, we see a very positive change and we’re very happy with the feedback we get from visitors to our websites.  All this is thanks to the work we’ve done with the website, working with our identity, brand profile, content, user testing, accessibility, SEO and more.