A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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I have a .uk domain and had to provide proof of residence or something to nominet. I can't remember the exact process now, but they did temporarily suspend my domain (without warning) until I contacted them.
So yeah, I'd say don't risk it if you're not based in the UK
Some ccTLDs have strict requirements (looking at you .de), but most are fairly standard TLDs. The last time I checked, .tv (for Tuvalu) was responsible for something like 40% of the country's GDP, so it's not surprising that most ccTLDs are welcoming to outsiders.
What's up with de domains?
Just make sure there's no wacky rules to follow on .uk Last I bought a domain, .us was the cheapest, but it had no WHOIS privacy and you were required to prove you were a US Citizen or company to buy it????? I noped right out
I did not have to do that with my domain.
Probably differs with each registry
Yeah. I just needed to provide a US-based mailing address.
As long as it's not critical to you if you lose the domain I would say go for it because you have to remember that with country domains the country has control over it and can always take it away from you.
Not an answer to your question, but I have .biz domains cuz they are cheap. Also OVH have a .ovh that was about £1
Totally fine. The only issue could come from legal implications since the domain registrations are managed by different organisations in different countries (leading to your registration data being an open book with .net domains but most likely unavailable with .nexus). However unless you're silly enough to host a very gay social media instance using the TLD from god damn Afghanistan you're probably fine (yes, that happened).
I looked up the .ai TLD on Wikipedia and
.ai is the Internet country code top-level domain for Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean.
Things will get interesting if those folks over there decide it's time to make some extra money
(yes, that happened).
What was the site? With .af I bet it was a fun name
Oof
A great domain name, too
I think country TLDs don't have WHOIS privacy protection if you care about that.
That's usually determined at the registrar level, not the registry level, though of course there are always exceptions.
Depends on the country
Yep, it's fine.
I got cc for my domain, because it was cheap and easy to remember. Though technically it's for the Cocos Keeling islands :P
There are very few instances of geo TLD's requiring proof that you live in the region the TLD represents but if you can buy a geo TLD, no it will not impact usage of any website using that domain.
As a us-based operator, I've used an Isle of Mann domain for my website for years without issue and have set them up for many clients that wanted something particular.
It doesn't really matter, no. All the DNS entries sync everywhere. So it isn't like you will have to ping some DNS server in the UK to get your website. Everyone will just hitup their normal DNS server and it will have the answer.
Also, the registration and hosting are separate. You can register your domain with the tld registrar and host with any company you want. Or at least I don't know any registrars that make you host with them.
(Though some domains like .com have a bunch of registrars because of the sheer volume.)
Normally it doesn't matter. The only restrictions is in terms of who can buy domains of that country to begin with (some countries have restrictions on that), and what sort of content is allowed in such domains. Other than that, it's OK.