Domain hack

A domain hack (sometimes known as a domain name hack) is an unconventional domain name that combines domain levels, especially the top-level domain (TLD), to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain. Examples of this hack include del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) and goo.gl (http://goo.gl/).

In this context, the "hack" represents a trick (as in programming), not an exploit or break-in (as in security).

Domains such as .al, .as, .it, .me, .us, or .co (Albania, American Samoa, Italy, Montenegro, United States, or Colombia respectively) are easy to use as domain hacks because they correspond to short, simple dictionary words. Alternatively, a name is chosen so that the last few characters match an existing top-level domain, such as "inter.net", so that every character is used in forming the common name.

Domain hacks offer the ability to produce extremely short domain names. For example, blo.gs has a total of only five letters (versus blogs.com, at eight letters), as every letter is taken into account as the site's title.

This makes them potentially valuable as redirectors (like i.am, which redirects to FortuneCity's V3 service), as pastebins and as base domains from which to delegate subdomains. Also short domains are useful for URL shortening services.

History

On November 23, 1992, inter.net was registered. 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 is well established. On Friday, May 3, 2002, icio.us was registered to create del.icio.us.

Who.is is a whois server, indicating the registered ownership information of a domain. It was established June 12, 2002 and registered to an address in Reykjavík, Iceland.

On January 14, 2004, the Christmas Island Internet Administration revoked .cx domain registration for shock site goatse.cx, a domain which used "se.cx" to form the word "sex". The domain was originally registered in 1999. Similar names had been used for parody sites such as oralse.cx or analse.cx; in some cases, .cz (Czech Republic) or .kz (Kazakhstan) are substituted for .cx.

The term domain hack was coined by Matthew Doucette on November 3, 2004 to mean "an unconventional domain name that uses parts other than the SLD (second level domain) or third level domain to create the title of the domain name."

Yahoo! acquired blo.gs on June 14, 2005, and del.icio.us on December 9, 2005.

On 11 September 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. Many desirable domain hacks, such as love.me or leave.me, 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 Google launched its own URL shortener under the domain goo.gl using the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Greenland.

In March 2010, National Public Radio launched its own URL shortener under the domain n.pr using the ccTLD of Puerto Rico. The n.pr domain is currently used to link to an NPR story page by its ID and is one of the shortest possible domain hacks in existence.

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 is public and can be used for any web address, itun.es is used only for iTunes Ping URL shortening.

International names

In most cases, registration of these short domain names relies on the use of country code domains, each of which has a unique two-letter identifier.

For example, blo.gs makes use of the TLD .gs (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) to spell "blogs", chronolo.gy uses the TLD .gy (Guyana) to spell "chronology", and tel.ly uses the TLD .ly (Libya) to spell "telly" (a popular British slang term for television).

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 TLDs .us (United States), .to (Tonga) and .it (Italy) to spell "delicious", "crypto" and "exploit" respectively.

In some cases, an entire country code domain 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.

.ly (Libya) has been used for English words that end with suffix "ly", such as sil.ly. Popular URL shortening services bit.ly, nm.ly (namely) and ow.ly use this hack.

Further information: ccTLD § Commercial and vanity use

Other languages

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, Niue authorities have revoked many of these domain names. The handful that remain are joke domains without actual nudity. French speakers often use the .JE TLD, since 'je' means 'I' in French. In addition, .JE is used in the Netherlands, as it can mean both 'you' (zoek.je = search ye) and 'little', since the addition of -je to most nouns produces a colloquial diminutive for (e.g. huis.je, or the well known iPhone app feest.je (feestje meaning 'party').

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.

Some organisations situated in Switzerland use TLDs to specifically refer to their canton (like the Belgian TLD .be for the Canton of Berne).

The American Samoa domain .as is popular in the handful of countries where A/S is the legal suffix for corporations. Likewise, Hungarian domains sometimes use the Moroccan top level domain .ma (meaning "today").

In Russian, net (as «nyet») means "no", so there are many domains in the format "something.net". A similar use of .info (in many languages where the term signifies "information") is to use a negatory term and .info to yield local equivalents to "there is no information". 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" the Polish language).

Family names in many Slavic languages ends with ch (i.e. -ich, -vich, -vych, -ovich), so .ch (ccTLD for Switzerland) is very interesting to them.

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 like "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 » ("here") in Portuguese or « ça » ("that") in Canadian French; local Canadian presence is required.

In Slovenian, si is a dative form of the reciprocal personal pronoun and a second person form of the verb to be. As .si is a Slovenian ccTLD, domain hacks are abundant. Additionally, the domain is attractive to speakers of Romance languages, because it is a conjunction, pronoun or an affirmative interjection in many. ARNES limits the use of the domain to residents and entities of Slovenia.

In Turkish, "biz" means "we", and can be used for emphasis at the end of "we are" sentences. So the domain www.anneyiz.biz could be translated as "We're mothers, we are." (This is the Hürriyet newspaper's family health and well-being site.)

Since the introduction of .eu domains (eu meaning "me" in Romanian and in Portuguese), these domains have become popular in Romania, with people registering their names with the .eu extension.

Many domain hacks are plays on words specific to one local language:

Domain	Registry	Translation
French language
aucun.info	.info	« aucun info » ("no info"), a base for FreeDNS subdomains
benefice.net	.net	« bénéfice net » ("net profit"), a business-related news site
c.la, cest.la	Laos	« c'est là » ("it's there") or « allez là » ("go there") are commonly used as redirectors
louez.ca	Canada	« louez ça » ("rent that"), a list of Montréal homes for rent
moi.je	Jersey	« moi, je » ("me, I"), a home of personal pages
operationmontreal.net	.net	« Opération Montréal net » ("operation: clean Montreal"), a city beautification site
teu.be	Belgium	« teubé » ("dumb"), a collaborative blog
voyez.ca	Canada	« voyez.ça » ("see that"), a collection of images
German language
klingt.org	.org	« klingt org » (Viennese for “sounds nasty/terrible”)
raba.tt	Trinidad and Tobago	« Rabatt » ("rebate")
schokola.de	Germany	« Schokolade » ("chocolate")
ueberwin.de	Germany	« Überwinde » ("overcome")
Naturli.ch	Switzerland	« Natürlich » ("natural.ly")
autom.at	Austria	« Automat» ("automat")
fals.ch	Switzerland	« falsch » ("wrong", "false")
koe.stli.ch	Switzerland	« köstlich » ("delicious")
linuxbu.ch	Switzerland	« linuxbuch » ("linux book")
Indonesian language
kro.co	Colombia	« kroco » ("small snail"), URL shortener
Italian language
val.li	Liechtenstein	« vai li » ("go there"), a redirector
Persian language
tejar.at	Austria	« tejarat » ("business"), currently redirects to Karsha eCommerce Group web-site
Portuguese language
notici.as	American Samoa	« noticias » ("news"), for Desciclopédia (an uncyclopedia) project "DesNotícias" ("UnNews" equivalent)
bibliote.ca	Canada	« biblioteca » ("library"), for Desciclopédia project "DesLivros" ("UnBooks" equivalent)
pesquisa.la	Laos	« pesquisa là » ("search there"), for Desciclopédia
vai.la	Laos	« vai lá » ("go there"), a redirector
vem.ca	Canada	« vem cá » ("come here"), used as a secondary domain name by a search site
grem.io	British Indian Ocean Territory	« Grêmio » is a football team, and grem.io is the team's official URL shortener
Spanish language
red.es	Spain	« redes » ("networks"), Spain's national domain-name registry operator
educ.ar	Argentina	« educar » ("to educate"), the Argentine government's education portal
pagina.de	Germany	« página de » (the page of), a web forwarding site.
recorta.me	Montenegro	« recortame » ("cut me"), URL shortener.
Hungarian language
erdely.ma	Morocco	« Erdély ma » ("Transylvania Today"), since "ma" means today in Hungarian
felvidek.ma	Morocco	« Felvidék ma » (means: Upper Hungary Today).
magyarorszag.ma	Morocco	« Magyarország ma » (means: Hungary Today).
semmi.se	Sweden	« Semmi se » (means: nothing at all).
Mandarin Chinese
zul.in	India	zū lìn (means: rent, lease, hire)
hen.huang.hen.bao.li	Liechtenstein	Hěn huáng hěn bào lì (means: Very erotic, very violent), a catchphrase spawned by a China Central Television news report
kan.de.jian.me	Montenegro	Kàn de jiàn me (means: Can you see it?)
Russian language
gepatitu.net	.net	« Гепатиту нет » tr. gepatitu net means "Down with hepatitis", since "Нет" net means "no" or "down with" in Russian
pisem.net	.net	« Писем нет » tr. pisem net means "No email".
zaycev.net	.net	« Зайцев нет » tr. zaycev net means "No hares".
zadolba.li	.li	« Задолбали » tr. zadolbali means "(You/they are) Such a pain in the ass".
Swedish language
halvera.nu	.nu	Halvera nu (means 'cut (the student union fee) in half now'; defunct party in the Uppsala Student Union)
studera.nu	.nu	Studera nu (means 'study now'; the official portal for university applications)
Dutch language
kijk.nu	.nu	Kijk Nu (means look now)
zoek.je	.je	zoek je (means 'little search')
huis.je	.je	huisje (means 'little house')
ontdek.me	.me	Ontdek me (means 'discover me')
Croatian language, and also Serbian language
pogledaj.to	Tonga	Pogledaj to (meaning "look at that")
poljubi.me	.me	Poljubi me (means kiss me)
vidi.me	.me	Vidi me (means see me)
Welsh language
cym.ro	Romania	Cymro (means Welshman), offers email forwarding addresses. See proposed TLD .cym
Danish language
findbolig.nu	.nu	Find bolig nu (means "find residence now")
Czech language
Uloz.to	.to	Ulož to (means "Save it")
Zkoukni.to	.to	Zkoukni to (means "Look at that")
Slovene language
Zadovoljna.si	.si	Zadovoljna si (means "Satisfied (fem.) /you/ are")
Nym.fo	.fo	A play on the word "Nympho" (see Hypersexuality)
Turkish language
anneyiz.biz	.biz	anneyiz biz (means "we're mothers")
Zulu language
amand.la	.la	Amandla (a Xhosa and Zulu word meaning "power") The word was a popular rallying cry in the days of resistance against Apartheid
thu.la	.la	thula (a Zulu word meaning "Be Quiet!")

See also

• Country code top-level domain
• Generic top-level domain
• Blo.gs and del.icio.us

References