4 ms·
Ask HN: Have you ever visited example.com?
Sorry if this seems a bit pointless, but for the first time just now I visited https://example.com/
Expected to find the typical "spammy" parked domain page, but instead learned this:
http://www.iana.org/domains/reserved
Had no clue about reserved domain names before today! You?
- frantzmiccoli 10y agoSome domains are not to be sold, to avoid domain squatting and the kind of spammy websites you were expecting.
- danso 10y agoYes, I use it as an example URL for tutorials or for testing out any HTTP-request-making code.
- guessmyname 10y agoAlso note that example.com has no MX records [1]: When an address such as username@example.com is used to demonstrate the sign-up process on a website, it directs the user to enter an actual email address at which they receive mail. Example.com is used in a generic and vendor-neutral manner. The list of reserved TLDs is quite short actually [2] but thanks to this page I understood that ".dev" is a bad TLD that people enjoy(ed?) using for their test/local websites [3]. I have been using ".test" for all my offline projects for a couple of years now, and ".local" was specifically very helpful when I had to build a fake DNS server for a DNS manager that I was maintaining. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain#Reserved_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain#Reserved_doma... [3] https://iyware.com/dont-use-dev-for-development/ https://iyware.com/dont-use-dev-for-development/
- ytjohn 10y agoI always use the example.net/example.com domains for my documentation. It drives me crazy when I see a tutorial using something they just made up like "myfakewebsite.com". Almost always, these lead to an actually registered domain like what OP was expecting to encounter.
- SamReidHughes 10y agoI use it as a non-HTTPS site that I can use to log in to Starbucks Wifi.
- bbcbasic 10y agoI use warriorforum.com for that
- atsaloli 10y agoSure. Example.com is an Internet standard. See http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt
- 27182818284 10y agoYes, it is used a fair amount by web developers. Often I notice more junior developers making up their own things, but that leads to situations where your debug/private messages can be sent to a real person. I'll see things like null@null.com or something@nothing.com, which is bad. I believe the owner of null.com gets tons of emails from buggy OnStar notices to mom+pop websites.
- zerognowl 10y agoSpecial Use for now, but this could change at the whim of standards bodies, and could become an ordinary domain. It certainly would be interesting to own such a domain and see what kind of emails you'd be getting.