How do custom top level domains like you can get from Neocities work? For example, corru.observer and corru.works. My understanding is that making your own domain name is really hard or expensive, and a custom TLD is harder. And i’m pretty sure Neocities is run by one guy, so surely it can’t be that hard to set up a domain name as an individual.
A “custom” top-level domain like .observer or .works isn’t something Neocities itself creates, those are real, officially registered TLDs managed by large domain registries (companies approved by ICANN).
Someone (a company, not an individual) applies to ICANN and pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to operate a new TLD like .works.
Once approved, they sell subdomains under it, so corru.works is just a normal domain name purchased from that registry, like buying myname.com.
Neocities then lets users point their sites to those domains (by updating DNS records), but it doesn’t own or create the TLDs itself.
So yes, creating your own TLD is expensive and complex, but using a newer one (like .observer or .works) is easy and cheap, you just register it through any domain provider.
Thanks. Since you didn’t link to it, those approved TLDs seem to be here.
derp, sorry, that might have been useful… glad you found them
domains are fairly inexpensive and easy to set up, and while ‘custom’ TLDs are extremely expensive (current round is hundreds of thousand of dollars per) none of those neocities TLDs are ‘custom’ TLDs. You could purchase a .observer or .works domain if you desired to. I am an individual and have my own domain. AMA.
Do you use your domain for anything besides a website?
Yes! I actually don’t host a website on my domain. Its purpose is purely for game servers I host for my friends.
I have multiple domains that I renew annually and I only use them for personal email hosting. I pay for an annual hosting package. I suggest Namecheap for hosting and to register a domain, either Namecheap or Namesilo. Stay away from GoDaddy. Neocities is a web presence site. We used to have Geocities and Yahoo/Yahoo Groups. MSN also did sites like this. It was all sponsored by advertising, and you owned nothing. A lot of the Geocities sites were fan sites, or creative people posting their art, music, photos, etc. You can pay $1-5000.00/a year for a TLD, but most run in the $10-20/a year range. Hosting is usually $50/a year and up.
You know how with libraries you go, find a book, and then check it out and take it home? After some time you have to take it back and return it and then you can either get another book or you can renew your checkout and keep the book a bit longer. This is what is happening when people are registering domains. It’s also what’s happening when an organization applies to own a new top level domain.
Let me explain. There are two different things this question could be in reference to: registering a domain and creating an entirely new top level domain (like .com, .net, .edu). Let’s start with creating an entirely new top level domain:
So the tip top level is run by ICANN which maintains the “golden standard” list of who owns what domain and top level domain. This organization will only point traffic to you if you are registered with them for the top level domain. This is very expensive, time consuming, and has a thorough vetting process before you are approved. If you are approved, they will point traffic to you and you can then point the traffic to the appropriate domain. There is a process to maintain ownership of the top level domain so you need to keep the registry up to date to keep ownership including paying fees and maintaining certain standards and paperwork.
The next level is a company that works in the middle of the owner of the top level domain and the average person who wants to register a domain. GoDaddy is an example of a company like this. They work with the owners to hand out domains for a fee. This leads to the next level of your question:
Much like the tip top level will register top level domains to organizations/businesses/etc., those same organizations/businesses/etc. can then turn around and sell any combination of characters before the top level domain. For example, if you owned .mybutt and it was approved and active, then anyone who wanted a domain that ended in .mybutt would need to be approved by you. Registering a domain at this level is generally pretty cheap compared to Top levels and most people pay just a few bucks for them. (with some exceptions)
You are the library in this scenario and the books are the domains. You can check out domains to people but they have to bring them back at some point or keep paying.
You in turn go to ICANN (a higher level library) to checkout a top level domain that you can then control.
I have no idea of the cost involved with a TLD, I just want to point out that your own domain, such as indigogollum.com is both cheap and easy.
Source: I have no idea how many domains I’ve had and used throughout the years. I’ve been able to ween myself off it, and now I’m down to 3ish
A TLD is just a name. For my own local network, I use all sorts of TLDs, and 20 years ago I used FreeDNS which let me register my own TLD for free.
What’s different on official Internet TLDs is that there’s a n organization that manages the “official” TLDs, and to register a domain name you have to pay money to one of their representatives to claim exclusive access to a domain name.
Different TLDs within that structure are owned by different entities and have their own restrictions as to who can claim sole use of a domain and how.
But there are now a bunch of newish TLDs that have been sold to raise money for the org as a whole, and their owners can charge whatever they want to register a domain on them.
