What are Internationalized Domain Names?

Dynadot is proud to have been one of the first registrars to support Internationalized Domain Names or IDNs. IDNs are domain names that use characters other than the letters A-Z from the Latin alphabet. IDNs allow international accessibility of the Internet by allowing users to register domain names in their own language and character set.

Since the Internet's roots are in the US, it was founded in English. Until recently, you could only register a domain name using the letters A-Z, numbers, and hyphens. Yet only 10% of the world's population are native English speakers. Imagine if you wanted to access the Internet, but didn't read or write English. Internationalized Domain Names are the solution and are available in many languages including Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, and more.

Unfortunately, not all top-level domains (TLDs) support IDNs, and some TLDs that do support IDNs don't support all languages. You can see a list of languages that are supported by our TLDs on our IDN search page. As you can see the .WS domain, also known as the "WorldSite" domain, supports all languages. The .WS domain team believes, "IDNs are creating an opportunity for everyone in the world, regardless of language or location, to be able to access the Internet in their native language." IDNs are a big opportunity that could bring large returns as the global domain market expands — and you can still find short domain names in Chinese, Japanese, and more with .WS Internationalized Domain Names.

But we saved the best news for last: .WS domains are on sale for just $6.99! Register your .WS domain today — our $6.99 sale price is available for both .WS IDNs and English .WS domain names. Don't miss out, our sale ends 3/31/13 23:59 PST!

Click on the video below to learn more about .WS WorldSite IDNs and what they can do for you:



Post by Robyn Norgan