Decoding the Domain Name del.icio.us
February 16th, 2005[This article is meant as a short tutorial for newbies to explain the basics how to register a domain name]
del.icio.us has become the most popular social bookmarks manager in recent times. Many surfers are drawn to curiosity by the peculiar domain name del.icio.us. It was an ingenious way to register a domain name. I mean it is much better than getting delicious.com or delicious.net etc. A domain search reveals there are many such names and many more subject to domain name availability.
First you figure out that icio was the selected domain name and .us was the registered country code level top level domain (ccTLD) which combined to form icio.us. If you try the url icio.us it does not connect. Sometimes registrars have a setup such that sites dont work on the world wide web without attaching the www. So you try to connect to www.icio.us – it also does not connect. So it seems no site is actually hosted at icio.us
Then maybe the domain name does not have an index page so maybe that is why the root url doesnt connect. Index pages are available in styles of index.htm or index.html – both of which point to the main page of a site. So I tried www.icio.us/index.htm and then again www.icio.us/index.html – but both dont work.
Then you try to look up the whois to find if the domain was actually registered at all. And Whois for icio.us revealed that indeed icio.us was registered to Joshua Schachter- our friendly webmaster running the very useful del.icio.us.
Now to solve the confusion of the del part. del is actually a subdomain of icio.us (Update: though some readers have pointed in comments that it del is a server of icio.us and not a subdomain). A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain name. So the main site del.icio.us is hosted on the del server of the domain name icio.us
And so rests the decoding of del.icio.us!
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wow. mindblowing.
Surely del is the name of the server. Conventionally a web server should be called www, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be called del.
Yeah, del is a server, not a sub-domain. If you look at the dns records, on zone transfer, from the authoritative name servers you will see an A record indicating that del is a host, and is not a sub domain.
ah, i see. I can grasp the gist of it… lol~ im still a beginner at networking and server stuff.
So if the server is named “Del”, I wonder if it is a Dell server? ;-)
You bow too easily to outside influence… of course del is a subdomain. Even the wikipedia article you linked to says so. “us” is a top-level domain, “icio” is a second-level domain, and “del” is a subdomain. Yes, an A record describes a host but that is irrelevant. There is an A record for yahoo.com, but does that mean it is a “host” and not a “domain”? Of course it is both. They are orthogonal. “del” is a host and a subdomain. Hmm, not sure if I’m being very clear, but you can email me if you want.
Other than that, cool blog, interesting posts. I found you through populicio.us.
hmm, blogger ditched my faked URL with my email address: ben at sixgDOTcom
I’ve been using the domain “ntio.us” so my web address could be “http://prete.ntio.us”. There are also a vew other words that you can make out of that: consientious, contentious etc.
michael
Are you sure it’s a host? It could be a load balancer that points at a whole cluster of servers, which wouldn’t surprise me considering the amount of traffic del.icio.us gets.
This post started out saying it was for newbies, so I don’t see why there’s so much arguing about whether del is sub domain or server or whatever. Post is just to explain to those confused out there about where del.icio.us name came from and how it can exist (or other sites created using same principals)
Actually, I do don’t see the point about the arguing either, for another reason, cuz it simply IS a subdomain, and it’s important that newbies don’t learn it wrong…right? :)
you can also have many deeper levels of subdomains (i don’t know the limit)
for example: http://lvl5.lvl4.lvl3.lvl2.lvl1.nl
I noticed some ISP’s tend to do that when translating their customer IP’s to hostnames (or vice-versa). Sometimes even their home village is included in the hostname.
The topic is quite hot in the net at the moment. What do you pay attention to while choosing what to write ?
p.s. Year One is already on the Internet and you can watch it for free.