domain registrar

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A domain registrar is an organization that will register domain names for your personal domain for an annual fee. A domain can be pointed at a website and/or as a domain-based handle as in ATProto.

Considerations

  • Configurability - You should be able to set up all record types (A, CNAME, MX, TXT) for as many subdomains as you'd like/need.
  • Email forwarding - does the registrar offer free email forwarding? This is useful if you want an @yourdomain.com email address that forwards to an existing account.
  • Auto-renew - it's easy to accidentally let a domain name registration expire; some registrars let you set up email reminders or an automatic renewal to prevent this from happening.
  • Domain Privacy - Note that most domain name registrars will make your personal information (name, mailing address, phone number and email address) publicly available via whois lookups. Some registrars offer domain privacy options, so that instead of your personal details the registrar's details will be in the whois directory. Only use domain privacy if you fully trust the provider of the service -- disputes about domain name administration or transfers may get tricky if you are not listed as the legal owner of the domain.
  • Bundled hosting? Shop around for the best registrar and best host for your needs. They do not need to be the same.

Opinions & Recommendations

Note: Listed in alphabetical order.

Active Registrars

This section is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it.

Cloudflare

DNSimple

Main article: DNSimple

Freenom

  • Freenom, a provider of many free domain names
  • Used for some ancillary sites by fluffy
  • Allows IDN registrations (including emoji)
  • Domains are private by default
  • You can also opt to pay for a domain if you want an ownership guarantee
  • Downside: used by a lot of spammers; don't use a free domain for your email address if you want people to actually read it
Gandi

Hover

Main article: Hover

Netim

NameCheap

Main article: NameCheap

Porkbun

Inactive Registrars

This section is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it.

Google Domains

Main article: Google Domains

More Information

The wiki also has pages for each of these registrars:

DNSimple
DreamHost
Hover
NameCheap
Squarespace

See Also

  • personal domain
  • short domain
  • DNS
  • Criticism of Gandi.net for poor handling of snapshot backups (on same machine and disk!), backpedaling on snapshots being backups despite marketing/sales copy claiming they are, and continued defensive responses on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andreaganduglia/status/1215199147701231616
    • "So you have lost out data and distrupt our services and now it's our job recover from backups? Are snapshots available?

      @gandi_net @gandibar @gandinoc" @andreaganduglia January 9, 2020
  • More criticism (see whole reply-context thread up) of Gandi.net poor handling of snapshot backups and how they responded: https://twitter.com/andreaganduglia/status/1215290652742823936
    • "You wrote in clear words that snapshots are backups. Today we find out that you keep backups on the same data filer (don't do that it's an industry wide knowledge).

      I have my data backups, but without snapshots I have to face the manually reinstall of all my VPS on that filer." @andreaganduglia January 9, 2020
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