gTLD + IDN Domain Names Support

The Internet community has dedicated significant efforts to broaden the availability of domain names beyond those reliant on the Latin script.

Thanks to IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) technology, nearly any Unicode character, vastly surpassing the limited set of ASCII characters traditionally used, can now be integrated into domain names. This breakthrough is facilitated by the implicit conversion of non-ASCII characters into a standard format, enabled by Punycode.

The platform fully embraces these intentions, enabling users from diverse linguistic backgrounds to utilize their native languages. This includes a wide array of symbols beyond the traditional Latin characters, such as Cyrillic letters or Chinese hieroglyphs when setting environment names and aliases.

These names are accurately displayed across the dashboard and when accessing accounts via the SSH console. Additionally, binding external IDNs to your environment is a seamless process, following the same workflow as for standard custom domain names.

Another significant category of domain names is gTLDs (Generic Top-Level Domains), which are a subtype of TLDs (Top-Level Domains). These are maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and were initially designed for specific types of organizations and companies.

The term “generic” denotes that these names are not associated with any particular country and can theoretically be utilized by anyone on the Internet worldwide. Integrating gTLDs into the platform allows users to associate such domain names (which are visible to Internet users as the suffix at the end of an address, such as .org, .academy, .best, etc.) with their environments.

Let’s get started! We’ll explore how to use these special domain names within the platform.

Default Environment IDN Domain

To begin, leverage the benefits of IDN when naming your environment through the topology wizard. Preconfigure your environment settings, then input your desired name in any language into the “Environment name” field below (the only requirement is that it must be longer than 5 characters), and finally, click “Create.”

Keep in mind that your environment name cannot start with “xn--” as this combination is reserved for representing IDNs in ASCII characters at the beginning of the address.

The creation process for these environments follows the usual steps, so in just a moment, your new environment will be seamlessly added to the dashboard.

If you open your environment in a browser that uses an IDN, the URL will look like the one shown in the image below:

This is how the domain name of our example environment appears in Punycode—a method used to represent Unicode with a limited subset of ASCII characters.

To avoid the inconvenience of an awkward link display, consider binding a custom domain name to your environment, including the IDN one.

You can set aliases for your environment (or even individual nodes) in your native language. This allows you to create familiar names for your technical resources, making them easier to identify and manage.

Custom IDN/gTLD Domain Name

Attaching both internationalized and generic top-level domain names to your environment is a breeze. Just follow the straightforward steps outlined in our documentation, which uses the same streamlined process as other custom domains. You can easily link one or even multiple domains to your app.

Additionally, the Swapping Domains feature can be utilized to manage these particular domain types.