On March 16th, 2004, the registration of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)
has become possible for .info domains.
As of that day, Afilias, the registry which is responsible for .info domains,
has expanded the set of characters allowed in .info domain names by the
umlauts “ä”, “ö” and “ü”. Therefore, it is now possible to register domain names
like “börse.info” or “motörhead.info”.
“For the first time ever, Internet users can register German domain names
and be assured that the registrations do comply with Internet
standards and that the domain names will actually work upon registration”
says Philipp Grabensee,
Chairman of Afilias' Board of Directors.
IDN registrations are based on the Punycode standard that was officially accepted
a little while before the introduction of Internationalized Domain Names.
This standard makes it possible for compatible internet browsers to identify
domain names even without installing any additional plug-ins.
The registration of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) follows the
well proven scheme “first come, first served”.
Registering early helps to avoid problems
with popular domain names.
That means that you should register domain names as soon as possible,
especially if they are particularly popular.
This way, you can make sure that no one else snaps up your
favorite domain names.
You can use
our Domain Registration System to
register domains online. Once you have chosen a name,
it only takes a few seconds to register the domain.
All you have to do is
to login to
the system with your user name and password.
If you do not have an account by now, you
can register in
a really fast and comfortable way.
With Knipp,
the prices for
domain names with special characters are not higher than those for
the registration of conventional domain names.
And what is more, every registration comes with a
huge bundle of additional
services.
Unfortunately, dubious domain resellers are often the first in the row to
register popular terms and even labels in order to sell them afterwards
at a profit.
Why take a risk?
With Knipp, you have a reliable partner
for domain registrations and more.
Quite often, dealing with domain names is illegal.
You can try to retrieve domain names with
an arbitral procedure according
to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
However, this is always troublesome and might even be expensive.
Therefore it is advisable to observe following rules:
Register your domain names
early.
Do never try to register domain names via the website of
unknown or dubious domain registrars.
There have been cases in which the only intention was to collect domain
names in order to register them on behalf of a domain reseller, who then
offered to sell the domains at a high price.
Do register not only one, but various
different notations of your domain names.
For example, if the domain name consists of multiple parts, it is a good
idea to register versions with and without hyphens.
This results in higher costs for the registration, of course,
but it helps to avoid the risk of much more expensive legal disputes.
E-mail application forms
Apart from our web interface, you also have the possibility to
use an e-mail template
to register domains. Just enter the domain name with the special characters
in section 1 of the template, as shown in the following example:
section: 1
mode: new
domain: müller-beer.info
language: de
To get more information on how to use the e-mail application forms, please refer
to the template help pages.
Registrations via
e-mail application form:
fast and efficient
Language codes
For some top level domains with local language characters
you have to identify the language as an additional specification.
Actually, .info domains do not belong to this group by now. In order
to be ready for future developments, however, our DRS does already offer the
possibility to enter language codes.
Although the values do not have any effect by now, it is a good idea to
set the language parameter to “de”.
You can find more detailed information in this
comment on the
technical background of Internationalized Domain Names.
Additional information on IDN
Internationalized Domain Names will become more and more
important in the future. That is why we have placed so much emphasis
on this topic on our website. You can get information on
the technical background,
we have put together a set
of questions and answers, and
there is a nice conversion tool
with which you can view the internal representation of the internationalized versions.
