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.self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

hccf.onmy.cloud

51–60 of 410 posts

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#51

In practice sadly many of these more obscure TLDs seem to be more expensive than more 'normal' ones like .org

Some of them, the more corporate or tech-focused ones like .ai or .inc or .tech or .llc. Very many of them are comparable within a dollar of .org.

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#52
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our goal is for .self to be more than just another TLD string, we want to specifically empower the self-hosting use case with local clients that integrate directly with the TLD and operate shared services like mail servers as a public good. We want to dramatically simplify the effort it takes to set up a domain for homelabs and offer free services that are directly tied to the domain like email.

And you needed a gTLD for this task why?

We don't necessarily, however there are many benefits for doing so. We could simply purchase a domain and then build our initiative beneath it but then everything we do would be beneath that domain, meaning there would be two dots in what is our effective TLD. That would also mean we are a bit beholden to whichever TLD we are beneath and also whichever registrar we purchased our domain from. With the services we hope to offer around things like TLS certs and emails, it just makes more sense for use to own the whole thing from the root.

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#53

Hold up...why isn't .self listed here: https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db Is this just an idea at this point, or some kind of "you have to use our DNS to resolve .self domains" scheme - ?

Domain names are not centralized, there is no central entity that controls an approved list of kosher domains.

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#54
post #38
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's no use for self-hosting unless all your users are on your private network.

Tailnet and Magic DNS make it easy to bring other people or devices to your network, including simple authentication mechanisms to know who is who

A VPN is literally a… (Very) Private Network.

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#57
https://hccf.onmy.cloud/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/dot-self....

> Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost

How are you going to pay for the (substantial) cost of running a TLD without registration fee revenue? Is this a loss leader for other services? Are you operating on a 100% donation model?

> No parking, squatting, or reselling

How do you plan to tell the difference between a parked/squatted domain and one in legitimate use but offering no public-facing services?

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#58
post #9

Shotgun on your.self! That’s going to yield a ton of great second level sub domains :)

We are probably going to reserve some of the more obvious ones for specific purposes, e.g. my.self automatically pointing to a homepage on your local network. As we go through the gTLD evaluation process we will be keen to solicit feedback from the community on more specifics!

Re: .self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

#60

ICANN and its consequences have been a disaster for the internet namespace.

I am disappointed that icannt.org is taken and is not an alternative root. Edit: I've been rate limited because of this comment, apparently. Account burned - will make a new one. Dang says below it's because of flagged comments but I don't see many flagged comments in my history.

Of course we wouldn't rate limit you, or anyone else, for an innocuous comment.

We rate limited you because of flamewar comments you posted in another thread, like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48723651. You posted over 50 times in that thread, and many of your comments there broke the site guidelines. That's abusive. If we didn't rate limit accounts for doing that, we might as well have no guidelines or restrictions at all.

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