The New TLDs are here – almost!

We’ve talked about ICANN’s new TLD project on and off over the last couple of years.

A TLD (top level domain) is the bit on the right of the dot, so the .com is the most popular TLD at the moment, but it’s soon going to be joined by hundreds of others.

You may remember that we even have a site dedicated to all the applications for new TLDs (yes – it needs a bit of an overhaul!)

It’s been a long drawn out and often messy process, but we’re finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel (metaphorically speaking!)

While IDNs (internationalised domain names ie. full UTF-8 domain extensions that support scripts other than Latin) might not be that important to our primary client base, they’re important to a lot of the non-English speaking world.

ICANN decided to give IDN TLDs priority, so the first four new domain extensions to be “delegated” are IDNs:

•     游戏(xn--unup4y) – Chinese for “game(s)”
•     сайт (xn--80aswg) – Cyrillic for “site”
•     онлайн (xn--80asehdb) – Cyrillic for “online”
•     شبكة (xn--ngbc5azd) – Arabic for “web/network”

You won’t be able to register domains under any of those new extensions yet, but they’ll be coming online in the next few weeks (and months) as the new registry operators finalise their launch plans, contract with registrars (such as ourselves) and go through a full launch process.

At the moment you *might* find one or two domain names in the new extensions that resolve. For example the guys over at .游戏 have registered nic.游戏 and you can reach it already in your browser (just click on the link).

We’ll provide more details on the various new extensions as they launch – watch this space!

Related articles

• First new gTLDs delegated (really!) (domainincite.com)
• First new gTLDs to go live “in the next few hours” (domainincite.com)