I have a .ga domain on Freenom, under '12 Months Free'. I had been renewing it and using the domain for 3 years now. After initial register I switched the DNS settings to CloudFlare and is using dash.cloudflare.com DDNS settings to manipulate CNAME records. Now the domain is pretty important to me and I'm willing to pay money, but is there any good way to migrate my domain to a stable, trusty domain registar like Namecheap? I'm pretty scared of losing this domain name..
Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
41–50 of 57 posts
Re: Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
#42I believe they have been out of compliance with ICANN and it might result in their TLDs being handed to another registrar
Re: Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
#43I remember when dot TK domains were free… I think they came with the caveat that ads got added to every website you hosted with one… that didn’t last long though. I had a four character TK domain back then.
I remember them standing at a hacker event where you would get a free “tosti” (ham and cheese sandwich) with every (also free) registered .tk domain. They had a booth to register domains on the spot.
Edit: actually it was the other way around. A free .tk domain with a free tosti https://www.flickr.com/photos/macfriendly/3834697501/in/pool...
Re: Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
#44I remember when dot TK domains were free… I think they came with the caveat that ads got added to every website you hosted with one… that didn’t last long though. I had a four character TK domain back then.
I remember them standing at a hacker event where you would get a free “tosti” (ham and cheese sandwich) with every (also free) registered .tk domain. They had a booth to register domains on the spot. Edit: actually it was the other way around. A free .tk domain with a free tosti https://www.flickr.com/photos/macfriendly/3834697501/in/pool...
Would this event be in the Netherlands?
A tosti is Dutch for what's called a croque monsieur basically anywhere else.
Re: Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
#45I believe they have been out of compliance with ICANN and it might result in their TLDs being handed to another registrar
ICANN doesn't have jurisdiction over ccTLDs.
Re: Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
#46I actually used a .tk domain for a forum for some university friends when I was still busy with my studies.
It worked well enough and was free, however I was asked for money to renew the supposedly free domain. That's when I decided that it's easier for me to just manage my domains with NameCheap or another solution where I already had some other paid domains (maybe to just put the forum under a subdomain of one of those).
Apart from the .tk domains being free at the time, there was nothing else going for the platform in my eyes. Note that I did pay for a year for that particular domain because it was cheap, so the transition would be smoother - a redirect at the web server level, where is you open the site through the old domain, you're redirected to the new one.
Re: Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
#47I think the biggest Freenom domain I've seen lately is https://mastodon.ml/, a big Russian-speaking Mastodon instance. I'm not sure though if they still use Freenom for the registration – I'll go ping the admin.
Re: Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
#48Note to future self: stick to .com
Re: Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
#49I think the biggest Freenom domain I've seen lately is https://mastodon.ml/ , a big Russian-speaking Mastodon instance. I'm not sure though if they still use Freenom for the registration – I'll go ping the admin.
Freenom own the TLD so you don't really have a choice. Every other registrar that offers the TLD is just going via Freenom anyways, and any major issues that affect Freenom will affect the entire TLD.
Re: Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart
#50Any way to acquire these ccTLDs (.tk .gq etc) domains without going through the quagmire that is Freenom? There has to be some service that bypasses this kind of gate-keeping. Surprised there's no dedicated NIC for these. http://nic.gq/ doesn't even resolve.
> Surprised there's no dedicated NIC for these. http://nic.gq/ doesn't even resolve. Sounds to me Freenom is the NIC, and the reason they're not present on nic.gq, etc., is that they're not very professional, and that their lack of pressionality is correlated with them falling apart right now.
That's right. The 'official' NIC URL for .tk is http://www.dot.tk/, but this is ran by Freenom. Similarly, the official URL for .gq is http://www.dominio.gq, which initially looks different, but it has a "powered by Freenom" logo at the bottom right.