Earlier today I registered the domain http://ʎɹɹɐɥ.com. Or did I? Upon reading an article by Sam Brown, which in turn linked to an article by John Sutherland explaining how to register such domains, I wanted one. There are a few levels to this trickery. There’s the ‘Oh I totally understand how this works!’
, or there’s the ‘I don’t want to know how it works, I just want it!’
level.
I just want one!
Okay, I didn’t actually register http://ʎɹɹɐɥ.com/, I registered what you might call its alias: http://xn--jna6b0ca7h.com. So, by that token, you find the upside down version of your domain (mine being harry) via this upside down letter converter, paste the result (mine being ʎɹɹɐɥ) into this IDN converter and add whatever domain extension (mine being .com) to the resulting string (mine being xn--jna6b0ca7h). You then register the outcome, and you can access it via the upside down version! http://ʎɹɹɐɥ.com/ is just an alias of http://xn--jna6b0ca7h.com/ in a sense…
If you view the source of this page you’ll see the markup actually links to http://ʎɹɹɐɥ.com/ but resolves to http://xn--jna6b0ca7h.com/ in the status bar when you hover it.
I want details!
If you want to actually understand the technicalities behind it, you ought to read the two articles linked previously.
Why would I need this?
You don’t, but it is cool, right? Although, you could use it as a pretty nifty short-URL for your blog on Twitter like Daring Fireball’s awesome http://?df.ws one.
Which leads me on to…
You don’t have to have an upside down domain, you can use glyphs in there too. Grab some glyphs from CopyPasteCharacter and pop those into the converter too.
Registering your domain
This is not a plug…
I’ve heard reports of people being asked about languages for the IDNs from their registrar of choice. I went with Heart Internet and registered http://xn--jna6b0ca7h.com/ no trouble, just as if it was a regular domain.
Be sure to comment it you buy/have bought one yourself.
By Harry Roberts on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 in Web Development. Tags: Domains | 9 Comments »
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Craig Parker said on 4 February, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Nice one mate, thanks for sharing, I am definitely gonna look at one for using URL shortening
Douwe said on 4 February, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Who will be the first to register ?pple.com (xn--pple-43d.com) using this method?
Jennifer L said on 4 February, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Great idea! I just have to come up with one for me… Hmm.
Timo Reitnauer said on 4 February, 2010 at 8:29 pm
You might also be interested in our upside down domain name generator at iWantMyName. It’s integrated with a domain search so you can skip the additional step.
Padizine said on 5 February, 2010 at 2:11 pm
As you said, this is kinda cool, but that’s about it. I mean I don’t see any useful application for this, unless it’s just for fun. However, using this trick to shorten your URL might prove useful in some situations.
Thank you for sharing this.
Dan said on 5 February, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Who’s gonna register: ??????sn?
waterman said on 2 March, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Great information,I have bookmarked this site to my list for future and will keep a eye on your other posts.
Russell Bishop said on 24 March, 2010 at 10:31 pm
It’s an interesting new idea for domains, although as I’m sure alot of people have stated before, it may pose security risks.
For example, if you took the domain name of a popular website where people enter sensitive details (banks, email, social networks..) and replaced some of the domain’s characters with upside down characters that are very similar to the original, we could need a whole new layer of identifying fake websites (especially for the non-internet savvy).
A friend of my (@Tom_Beynon) purchased http://uƃısǝpqǝʍ.com (webdesign.com) a few weeks back, not as a “THIS IS A GOLD MINE”, but more, as you’ve put it, it’s just cool!
Keep a close eye on these domains!
Nathan Grubbs said on 5 September, 2011 at 12:09 am
I tried this and bought http://uɐɥʇɐu.com
It was a bit tricky with the whole IDN language thing, but eventually just put in portuguese as the language I was using on godaddy and it worked just fine.
Thanks for the write-up. I was trying for a while to figure this out for a long while before discovering your site, which made it a lot easier.
Thanks!