Domain hack
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A domain hack is a
Domain hacks offer the ability to produce short domain names. This makes them potentially valuable as redirectors,
History
On November 23, 1992, inter.net was registered.[4] In the 1990s, several hostnames ending in "pla.net" were active. The concept of spelling out a phrase with the parts of a hostname to form a domain hack became well established.[5] On Friday, May 3, 2002, icio.us was registered to create del.icio.us. Delicious would later gain control of the delicio.us domain, which had been parked since April 24, 2002, the day the .us ccTLD (country code top-level domain) was opened to second-level registrations.
Who.is.
On January 14, 2004, the
The term domain hack was coined by
On September 11, 2007, name servers for .me were delegated by IANA to the Government of Montenegro, with a two-year transition period for existing .yu names to be transferred to .me. One of the first steps taken in deploying .me online was to create .its.me as a domain space for personal sites.[11] Many potential domain hacks, such as love.me and buy.me,[12] were held back by the registry as premium names for later auction. One .me domain hack example is please.do.not.disturb.me.
On December 15, 2009,
Working with
In March 2010,
In late 2010, Apple launched a URL shortener at the domain itun.es, using the ccTLD of Spain, in a similar move to Google's goo.gl. Unlike goo.gl, which was public and could be used for any web address, itun.es is used only for iTunes Ping URL shortening.
Spotify also uses the
International names
In most cases, registration of these short domain names relies on the use of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), each of which has a unique two-letter identifier.
For example, ) to spell their own name.
Many people use domain hacks for their name to serve their personal website. Some prominent examples include: rome.ro (John Romero), melan.ie (Melanie C), sive.rs (Derek Sivers) and nav.al (Naval Ravikant).
Domain hacking is not limited to singular words. For example, helpmelearn.it uses the ccTLD for Italy to write out "help me learn it". While there is technically no restriction, these domain hacks tend to limit themselves to using only ccTLDs that are words in-and-of-itself, such as the aforementioned Italy as well as Iceland (.is) and Montenegro (.me)
The third-level domains del.icio.us, cr.yp.to and e.xplo.it make use of the SLDs icio.us, yp.to and xplo.it from the ccTLDs .us (United States), .to (Tonga) and .it (Italy) to spell "delicious", "crypto" and "exploit" respectively.
In some cases, an entire ccTLD has been re-purposed in its international marketing, such as .am (Armenia), .fm (Federated States of Micronesia), .cd (Democratic Republic of the Congo), .dj (Djibouti), and .tv (Tuvalu) for sites delivering various forms of audiovisual content.
Some feline-related websites, such as nyan.cat have used the .cat domain, which is meant for the Catalan linguistical community.[20]
After a legal fight to allow so, the Moldovan ccTLD (.md) has been used by doctors and medical companies due to its resemblance to the abbreviation MD, used by those holding a Doctor of Medicine degree.[22] It has also been used by websites relating to the Markdown markup language (such as Obsidian, obsidian.md) which uses .md as its file extension.
Other languages
In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland the domain .ag for Antigua and Barbuda is used by corporations in the legal form of Aktiengesellschaft (commonly abbreviated as AG).
The American Samoa domain .as is popular in countries where AS or A/S (Aktieselskab/Aksjeselskap) is the legal suffix for stock-based corporations in Denmark and Norway, so companies of those countries frequently employ it.
Some organisations situated in
In a similar way some organizations in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein use the .sh TLD from Saint Helena.
In Turkish, "biz" means "we", and can be used for emphasis at the end of "we are" sentences.
Since the introduction of .eu domains (eu meaning "I" in Romanian, Galician and Portuguese), these domains have become popular in Romania, with people registering their names with the .eu extension.[citation needed] Before the .eus domain was introduced, .eu was also widely used by websites from the Basque Country, as it resembled the word euskera (meaning Basque).
In French, Italian and Portuguese, là or lá mean "there". As the .la domain (Laos) is available for second-level registration worldwide, this can be an easy way to get a short, catchy name such as "go there". In Italy some TLDs are identical to Italian Provinces' identifier, such as .to (Turin) or .tv (Treviso) and are thus extensively used for web domains in the area. The Canadian domain .ca is also trivial to use as cá or cà ("here"), respectively in Portuguese and Neapolitan, or ça ("that"), in French; however, unlike some countries, Canada's .ca registrar requires local Canadian presence to use this domain.
Hungarian domains sometimes use the Moroccan top level domain .ma (meaning "today").
A fad amongst French-speakers was to register their names in the Niue TLD .nu, which in French and Portuguese means "nude" or "naked"; however, as of 2007[update], Niue authorities have revoked many of these domain names. The handful that remain are joke domains without actual nudity. French speakers often use the Jersey TLD .je, since "je" means "I" in French. In addition, .je is used in the Netherlands, as it can mean both "you" or "your". The addition of -je to most nouns also produces a diminutive form (e.g. huis.je, or the defunct iPhone app feest.je (feestje meaning "party").[23]
Likewise, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish speakers sometimes use .nu, because it means "now" in these languages. The TLD is still used by many Swedish sites, as prior to 2003 it was impossible for individuals (and difficult for organizations) to register arbitrary domains under the .se TLD.
English words that end with the "rs" letters (cars, fixers, powers... etc.) provide means for another popular domain hack which utilizes the Serbian .RS domain extension.
In Russian, net (as нет, or nyet transliterated character for character) means "no" or "there isn't," so there are many domains in the format something.net (e.g. redaktora.net meaning "[there is] no editor"). There are many words ending with ga (Cyrillic: га), including some highly popular (книга/kniga meaning book, дорога/doroga meaning road). Gabon's .ga domain is free for registration, which has led to wide adoption of such domain hacks.
In Czech, Polish and Slovak, to means "it", so there are many domains using Tonga's .to in the format "do-something.to" (e.g., zrobie.to, meaning "I will do it" in the Polish language or prestahujeme.to meaning "We will move it" as Slovak moving service). Notably, Czech file sharing service uloz.to was founded in 2007, and its name "ulož to" means "save it".
In Czech as well, se and si are particles markings reflexive verbs, therefore the Sweden's and Slovenia's TLDs are used for domain hacks, such as a taxi service svez.se (for "have a ride") or a game server hraj.si ("play") albeit the latter ones are no more available for new registration for non-Slovenian entities (see paragraph below).
In
In Spanish and Portuguese, ar is the ending of the infinitive of many verbs, so hacks with Argentina's TLD .ar are common (e.g., educ.ar, meaning "to educate"). Similarly, another such verb suffix is ir, TLD of Iran.
One of the earliest commercial ISPs in Finland used the domain sci.fi — a reference to science fiction.
In Kurdish, "im" means "I am", so it's possible to make meaningful domains for personal purposes with the Isle of Man TLD .im. For example, rebaz.im would mean "Rêbaz im", which translates to "I am Rêbaz".
Some registries allow Emoji in domains, permitting the creation of emoji domains. Many browsers display these domains as punycode for security reasons.
With the rise of
See also
- Country code top-level domain
- Generic top-level domain
- Doma.in Na.me Ha.ck Cl.ub (a listing of people with personal domain hacks)
References
- ^ "Domain Hacks & Email Hacks". xona.com.
- ^ "Domain Hacks = Fun Domain Name Opportunities". Dynadot.
- ^ "Startup Domain FAQ – Should I Use A Domain Hack?". morganlinton.com. July 16, 2013.
- ^ "inter.net WHOIS record". Whois domain search.
- ^ "List of coolest hostnames and domain hacks circa 1995". Linuxmafia.com. Retrieved February 23, 2013.
- ^ "WHOIS Search, Domain Name, Website, and IP Tools". who.is.
- ^ "Acceptable Use Policy .cx - Christmas Island". Council of Country Code Administrators. Archived from the original on October 21, 2008.
- ^ "Domain Hacks Information".
- ^ Winstead, Jim (June 14, 2005). "blo.gs: sold". Archived from the original on March 9, 2009.
- ^ Schachter, Joshua (December 9, 2005). "y.ah.oo!". delicious blog. Archived from the original on September 3, 2011. Retrieved October 2, 2013.
- ^ "Montenegro .me tld to attract interest for domain hacks". Dnxpert.com. November 8, 2007. Retrieved February 23, 2013.
- ^ "Going Once, Going Twice – Top .ME Names Up For Bid". Domain.ME. September 22, 2008. Archived from the original on August 25, 2009. Retrieved October 2, 2013.
- ^ "Make Way for youtu.be Links". Youtube Official Blog. Retrieved August 9, 2014.
- ^ Wortham, Jenna (December 16, 2009). "The Times and Bit.ly Roll Out 'nyti.ms' Short Links". The New York Times "Bits" Blog. New York City, New York.
- ^ Andy Carvin, Daniel Jacobson and Jon Foreman (March 3, 2010). "You Say NPR, But On Twitter We Say n.pr". NPR. Npr.org. Retrieved February 23, 2013.
- ^ "Flickr Services". www.flickr.com. Retrieved May 30, 2023.
- ^ Allemann, Andrew (September 28, 2015). "Another .Co win: Taco Bell using Ta.co". Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News. Retrieved May 30, 2023.
- ^ "win.gs whois lookup - who.is". who.is. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
- ^ LVGP Press Room (May 12, 2023). "RED BULL ANNOUNCED AS PRESENTING PARTNER FOR THE FORMULA 1 HEINEKEN SILVER LAS VEGAS GRAND PRIX". Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
- ^ "Domain Hacks - 100 Sites Using Unusual Top-Level Domains". webhost.al. May 14, 2015. Archived from the original on June 23, 2017. Retrieved May 14, 2015.
- ^ Horn, Leslie (October 6, 2010). "Libya Seizes URL Shortener Vb.ly". PC Magazine.
- ^ Norbut, Mike (January 17, 2005). "New company makes push for ".md" domain". American Medical News. Retrieved May 21, 2015.
- ^ Oosterveer, Danny (April 9, 2012). "Feest.je gooit handdoek in de ring". marketingfacts.nl. Retrieved May 21, 2015.