Four Years Remaining

I received a number of "why" and "how" questions regarding the pri.ee domain name of this site and I thought the answers are worth a post. The technically savvy audience can safely skip it, though.

The pri.ee subdomain is reserved by EENet for private individuals, who have an estonian ID code. The registration is free of charge and very simple: you just fill in a short form and wait a day or two until your application is processed. As a result you end up with a simple affiliation-free way of designating your site. Of course, it does not have the bling of a www.your-name.com, but I find it quite appropriate for an aspiring blog (and besides, I'm just too greedy and lazy to bother paying for the privilege of a flashy name for my homepage).

Now on to the "how" part. The only potentially tricky issue of the registration process is the need to fill in the "Name servers" field. Why do you need that and why can't you just directly provide the IP address of the server where you host your site? Well, if you could register the specific IP of your server with EENet, you would have to to contact EENet every time your hosting provider changed, right? In addition, you would need to bother EENet about any subdomain (i.e. <whatever>.yourname.pri.ee) you might be willing to add in the future. Certainly not the most convenient option. Therefore, instead of providing an IP address directly, you specify a reference to an intermediate server, which will perform the mapping of your domain name (and any subdomains) to IP addresses. That's how the internet domain naming system actually works.

So which name server should you choose? Most reasonable hosting providers (that is, the ones that allow to host arbitrary domains) allow you to use their name servers for mapping your domain name. The exact server names depend on the provider and you should consult the documentation. For example, if you were hosting your site at 110mb.com (which is here just an arbitrarily chosen example of a reasonable free web hosting I'm aware of), the corresponding name servers would be ns1.110mb.com and ns2.110mb.com.

However, using the name server of your provider is, to my mind, not the best option. In most cases the provider will not allow you to add subdomains and if you change your hosting you'll probably lose access to the name server, too. Thus, a smarter choice would be to manage your domain names yourself using an independent name server. Luckily enough, there are several name servers out there that you can use completely free of charge (or for a symbolic donation): EveryDNS and EditDNS are two examples of such services that I know of.

After you register an account with, say, EveryDNS, you can specify the EveryDNS nameservers (ns1.everydns.net, ..., ns4.everydns.net) in the pri.ee domain registration form. You are now free to configure arbitrary address records for yourname.pri.ee or <whatever>.yourname.pri.ee to your liking.

To summarize, here how one can get a reasonable website with a pri.ee domain name for free:

1. Register with a reasonable web hosting provider
   • 110mb.com is one simple free option (with an exception that they charge $10 once if you need MySQL)
   • other options
2. Register a DNS account
   • EveryDNS
   • other options
3. Fill out this form.
   • If you chose EveryDNS in step 2, state ns1.everydns.net, ns2.everydns.net, ns3.everydns.net, ns4.everydns.net as your name servers.
   • Wait for a day or two.
4. Suppose you applied for yourname.pri.ee (the domain is still free, by the way!), then:
   • Add this domain in your hosting's control panel and upload your website.
   • Add this domain to your DNS account.
     • You can add an A ("address") record mapping yourname.pri.ee to an IP address.
     • Alternatively, you can add a NS ("name server") record referencing yourname.pri.ee further to ns1.110mb.com (or whatever name server your hoster provides).
5. Profit!