tl;dr
In the US, you can get a domain name like somename.city.state.us To free. If your city has its own domain, you can get nameservers from Amazon Lightsail, send Interim .US Domain Template Send the Delegated Manager for your area to register one, then point the DNS entries to your webhost.
What is locality domain?
A locality domain is a domain name associated with a location in the United States, such as frederick.seattle.wa.us (which currently redirects to fredchan.org). Locality domains were first created in 1992, and the infrastructure has since been maintained under government contract.
To register one, you must be a US citizen or permanent resident, an organization incorporated in the US, or an organization with a physical presence in the US that regularly engages in lawful activities or have an office in the US. (For full terminology, see bottom of this form).
Step 1: Choose a locality domain
The registration of many local domains is entrusted to different companies that actually handle the domain registration. See the list of delegated subdomains for domains under which you can register, which also contains contact e-mails for the corresponding registrars as of 2009.
Since this list is quite old and some companies may have been reorganized/renamed, you may need to look for the e-mail for the current incarnation of the registrar. For example, the listed e-mails seattle.wa.us Is domainrq@nwnexus.com Belongs to NW Nexus, which is now NuOz Corporation, so the e-mail I contacted was support@nuoz.com.
If you don’t live in one of these areas, you can try registering a domain under gen.your-state.usSuch as Next.gen.oh.us, which is officially for general independent institutions. The contact should be in the same list.
If the locality domain you are looking for is not listed (ie the registration has not been assigned), you are probably in trouble. NuStar, the manager of all unrestricted domains, will only allow local government agencies to register them due to government policy. This is supposed to be temporary, but the policy has been in place since 2002.
Step 2: Get Nameservers
When you get a generic domain, like fredchan.orgYour domain registrar usually provides nameservers for you after purchase. These nameservers are where you put DNS records that point your domain to an IP address, like your web host’s IP address. However, to register a locality domain, you must already have nameservers.
The only place I could find that offers Free The nameserver for non-top level domains (e.g. every local domain) is Amazon Lightsail. Lightsail is a low-cost AWS web hosting service from Amazon. Usually you have to rent a web hosting server from them, but you don’t actually have to do that.
- Create an AWS account and go to the Lightsail console.
- Click on the left navigation panel
Domains & DNS. - Click
Create DNS zonebutton. - choose
Use a domain from another registrarand type domain you intend To register later. - Click
Create DNS zone. - Take care of the domain name in
Name serversSection. You need these when you fill out the domain registration form.
Step 3: Fill out the domain registration form
Now that you have the name servers, you can fill out the interim .US domain template v2.0. In this section, I’ll walk you through some of the trickier parts of this form, assuming you’re registering a domain for yourself.
2. FULLY-QUALIFIED DOMAIN NAME:
This is the domain you want to register, for example frederick.seattle.wa.us.
3. ORGANIZATION INFORMATION
If you are an individual and not an organization, you can fill Sections 3A-E with your address.
4. DESCRIPTION OF ORGANIZATION/DOMAIN:
Describe what you are doing with this domain. For example, if you expect to host a website on it, you can say so. You can also use it for purposes that you don’t write down in the form later.
5. Date Operational......:
You can use your date of birth here.
6. ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACT OF ORGANIZATION/DOMAIN And 7. TECHNICAL AND ZONE CONTACT
You can be both of these. 6i, 7i, and 7j can all be your e-mail address, and if you don’t have a fax number, leave 7k blank.
8. PRIMARY SERVER: HOSTNAME, NETADDRESS And 9. SECONDARY SERVER: HOSTNAME, NETADDRESS
This is where you fill in your name server address.
Lightsail will have given you at least 2-4 name server addresses, of which you will need to know the IP address of each. You can use online DNS lookup tools to find their IP addresses dig command in your terminal.
Any nameserver can be the primary server. Then, for the remaining servers, you can repeat as many times as you want until you add section 9 All Nameservers.
10. US NEXUS REQUIREMENTS
Instructions for Section 10 appear at the bottom of the form. For example, if the domain is for personal use and you are a US citizen, the purpose of your application is (iii) personal useyour nexus category is (category 11) Natural person who is a United States CitizenAnd you leave Nexus Validator blank.
Step 4: Send the form and wait
Send the form to the domain registrar you previously identified for the domain in your area. When registering, I wrote “I would like to register a new locality domain with the following information” And pasted the entire content of the form into the email, so they know what the form is for.
This may take days or possibly weeks, as they are usually not automated. If successful, you will receive an e-mail confirming that your domain has been registered.
Step 5: Finish setting up DNS in Lightsail
You can now go back to the DNS zone created in Lightsail DNS records tab, create a DNS record to point your domain to any server you want – web server, Minecraft server, FTP server… anything!
For free web hosting, I use GitHub Pages, which has a guide for configuring a custom domain. Different web hosts will have slightly different instructions, but they all involve creating a DNS record.
Once your DNS records are configured, you should be able to visit your new locality domain and view your website!
FAQ
Do I really have to be within my local domain’s area?
I’m not really sure. To be honest, I doubt anyone actually cares to check whether you live at the address given in the registration form. I know someone who lived in his area, moved out of the country, and still has the domain in his area. However, your mileage may vary.
Will WHOIS requests leak my address?
No. Even though you must provide your address in the registration form, a WHOIS request for your local domain will only show information about the registrar.
special thanks
Many thanks to Sleepless and Minh Nguyen for their guidance on registering a locality domain. After looking at their guides, I wanted to write my own to help clarify some of the questions I had while following them, which led to this article!
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