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Ask HN: Have you ever visited example.com?

10 points by glaberficken ↗ HN
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?

9 comments

[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 27.3 ms ] thread
frantzmiccoli
Some domains are not to be sold, to avoid domain squatting and the kind of spammy websites you were expecting.
danso
Yes, I use it as an example URL for tutorials or for testing out any HTTP-request-making code.
guessmyname
Also 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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain#Reserved_doma...

[3] https://iyware.com/dont-use-dev-for-development/

ytjohn
I 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
I use it as a non-HTTPS site that I can use to log in to Starbucks Wifi.
bbcbasic
I use warriorforum.com for that
27182818284
Yes, 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
Special 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.