What The New gTLDs Mean To You

Posted By: Brian Farrell

Last Updated: Tuesday June 24, 2014

If you were to ask a random person on the street for their favorite website, odds are the overwhelming majority would say something that ends in .com. Facebook.com, google.com, twitter.com, reddit.com…you get the idea. For what feels like forever, .com has been the standard for all premier websites throughout the world. It didn’t matter if you were based in the USA, China, India, Ireland, or even the Isle of Man. If you wanted to find a website, you looked for the .com. For better or worse, we may see a major shift in how exactly people look for their favorite websites over the next few years.

gTLDs. gTLDs Everywhere!

The internet as we know it, at least in the domain space, is about to get a major facelift. In previous years we’ve seen new gTLDs being rolled out and adopted (.biz, .info, .asia, .mobi, .jobs) so this isn’t exactly a novel idea. What is new, however, is the raw amount of gTLDs that are being applied for. At the outset the potential is nearly limitless. Do you consider yourself an expert on all things yoga? You’ll want to try and register yoga.guru. Are you the best mechanic within 100 square miles? Your business may benefit from owning the domain bestnewyork.mechanic. Have an awesome chess club based out of your city? grandmasterclub.NYC would let everyone in your city know where to find the chessmasters. Even in the hosting industry you’ll see plenty of new gTLDs take prominence (.wordpress, .forums, .drupal, .host, etc).

While there is no denying the room for both creativity and highly unique domains, you can’t help but wonder “how much is too much?”. In our opinion, this is a great adoption by both ICANN and the hosting industry as a whole. Customers, businesses, and entire industries can adopt these new gTLDs to make navigating the internet a much more enjoyable experience. We’re extremely excited to see what trends gain momentum over the next 2 years as more and more gTLDs are delegated by ICANN.

So what can and can’t you do with these new gTLDs in regards to your account with Hawk Host? Well…

You can:

Host any new gTLD on any hosting plan with us
Send and receive emails with any new gTLD with us
Create addon, sub, and parked domains with your new gTLD domain
Enjoy all the other features and benefits of hosting with Hawk Host

You can’t (Yet):

Register new gTLDs with us (coming soon!). We’re working very closely with our registrar and should have a full supported list of gTLDs available ASAP.

As you can see, there is very little you can’t do in regards to the new gTLDs and your hosting services with us. We’ve already seen a number of customers sign up with some of the more popular gTLDs (.guru, .ninja, .club) and a handful of more obscure ones as well. Needless to say, widespread adoption is already underway and we’ve merely scratched the surface of the possibilities these new extensions allow.

For more reading on the new gTLDs, check out ICANNs official site at http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/. As time goes on additional gTLDs will be delegated, making it easy to secure a domain for just about every extension you could imagine. The possibilities are limitless, how creative can you be?