Top
Best
New

Posted by speckx 22 hours ago

Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)(fredchan.org)
571 points | 178 commentspage 3
giobox 20 hours ago|
Remarkable, I had absolutely no idea I could do this in my state. I suspect this post is going to cause a spike in applications as folks like me discover we can have one for free.
TrevorFSmith 21 hours ago||
Definitely keep in mind that right or wrong, these hosts are unusual as far as most commercial services are concerned and it can reveal annoying edge cases in their software.
cube00 18 hours ago||
eBay still in 2026 can't send to subdomains.

Use something like ebay@shipping.example.com and they send to ebay@example.com

I had to check the server logs to find why I wasn't receiving any mail and now need a top level alias just for eBay to handle their broken mail infrastructure.

servercobra 17 hours ago|||
I'm constantly annoyed how much trouble I have using a .health domain (looking at you T-Mobile). I can't imagine using this many subdomains off a .us.
anticorporate 19 hours ago|||
True. I struggled to get signed up for my COVID vaccine back in 2021 because Walgreens wouldn't accept that my totally valid .rodeo email address could possibly exist.

I still use that domain for most corporate accounts. Currently, my wireless carrier refuses to believe I exist in some of their systems (but not others) because of it.

Fortunately, escalating complaints with large corporations with shitty practices is a hobby of mine.

thomas_viaelo 19 hours ago||
[dead]
1970-01-01 20 hours ago||
Before you jump in, and because why not, there are also city-centric TLDs for purchase, with little oversight:

.nyc

.boston

.quebec

.miami

.vegas

adammdaw 6 hours ago||
Wish we had this option in Canada. This would be cool as heck.
hatthew 13 hours ago||
I wonder how reliable this is. Will AWS lightsail continue to work indefinitely for free? What if AWS changes the system in some way? What if the person hosting my locality becomes unavailable?
jdofaz 15 hours ago||
I had one for a long time but the isp that was the local registrar is long defunct now
NetMageSCW 15 hours ago|
It is a bad idea to have any services come from your ISP that aren’t portable.
cmdoptesc 18 hours ago||
A few years back, I looked into registering a *.sf.ca.us locality domain and Sonic was the registrar back then.

Now, I'm trying to recreate how I found that, and I can't. But if anyone is interested, try: hostmaster [at] 50N1C [dot] net (spell sonic correctly).

cogitosum 17 hours ago|
whois sf.ca.us
cmdoptesc 17 hours ago||
For some reason, I was using ICANN's lookup (lookup.icann.org) which came up empty. But yes, a simple whois from the commandline gave me the right contact. Thanks!
ltsSmitty 20 hours ago||
Great instructions! Well, I'll follow up and let you know if Gainesville, FL responds!
xd1936 19 hours ago||
Could I use Cloudflare's free nameservers instead of Amazon Lightsail?
lights0123 18 hours ago|
Cloudflare only supports managing top level domains on the Free plan.
manlymuppet 18 hours ago|
This is so awesome.

Can you setup wildcards? Like for example *.[name].san-fransisco.ca.us? That way I can do this once for my own name and have it setup for all future needs as well.

EnigmaCurry 18 hours ago|
Yes. The registrar is for the root domain. You provide your own DNS. DNS can do wildcards for any root domain its delegated.
More comments...