I was looking for catchy domain names, And I came across emoji domains like 📙.ws or i❤️.ws

Well, I knew what my task of day is going to be. Below is the report of my 3 hour investigation into Emoji Domains.

How are they possible?

To create standardization in Internet hostnames every domain name is encoded into punycode, a LDH (letters, digits, and hyphens) subset of ASCII, by browsers before URL encoding it. pseudo code for the flow can written as:

final_url = url.encode(
    punycode.encode(domain.name) + '/rest of the path'
)

Now, by only using LDH, other ASCII char are converted into xn-- form, some examples are:

• ü -> xn--tda
• 人 -> xn--gmq
• 😀 -> xn--e28h

links: punycoder.com | urlenc.com

Why are they so rare?

With the restriction of LDH many hosting services also add the rule that - must be surrounded by characters to decrease changes of scamming or exploits therefore making -- illegal.

Click Here to know more.

Loop-Hole: According to wikipedia, As of April 2021, there are eleven top-level domains for which registration is possible: .uz, .cf, .ga, .gq, .ml, .tk, .st, .fm, .to, .kz and .ws

Lets get one!

I noticed .tk, and I remembered long ago they were giving redirector domain names for free that too without signup. I checked back, sadly that was not the case anymore, Although the fees was not that much, But I am not willing to pay for a detour in my evening.

Okay if we can't have domain name, lets get a subdomain, I already have a InfinityFree account, So lets try there, but it looked at -- and said no latin letters, So, I looked around and found some websites but I had to input my card info, so i backed out.

Finally, ProFreeHost was my saviour, I quickly setup an account, found how to redirect the url, only thing left was to think of a domain name, After ton of soul searching, there it was on my youtube feed, Lightyear | Teaser Trailer. So I went to infinity and beyond and created my website: 2️⃣♾️➕🚀.unaux.com

If you make/made your own Emoji Website, comment below and share with us as well.