.io
This article is a stub. You can help the IndieWeb wiki by expanding it.
.io is the ccTLD for British Indian Ocean Territory, a top level domain in use by several IndieWeb (and adjacent) personal sites, services, and projects, and as of 2024 in a state of potential transition.
If you are looking for other uses of io see:
.io is comparatively expensive ($39 on gandi.net at the time of writing), but easy to set up, and perhaps valuable as a novelty TLD for IndieWeb purposes because of IO's input/output double meaning. There are no known administrative problems establishing .io domains.
Phasing out
⚠️ Possible phasing out within five years:
- 2024-10-08 The Verge: How a UK treaty could spell the end of the .io domain / .io is the country code domain for the Chagos Islands — or the British Indian Ocean Territory — which the UK just agreed to relinquish control of.
The IANA aims to retire old country code domains within five years
- 2024-10-03 : Ask HN: What happens to ".io" TLD after UK gives back the Chagos Islands? (archived), link post:
It sounds like there's a very real possibility that .io could be deleted after a few years notice - it's happened before […]
- See also the still ongoing thread on HN.
IndieWeb Examples
IndieWeb folks using .io short URLs as their primary site:
- werd.io:
Ben Werdmüller - bret.io:
Bret Comnes 
Jonathan LaCour
as services / utility sites:
- *.p3k.io subdomains:
Aaron Parecki, like quill.p3k.io, monocle.p3k.io, etc. (see p3k for more)
- moving these to .app domains over time, e.g. xray.p3k.app
Criticism
The .io TLD has been criticized for generating profits for the British government instead of the people of the Indian Ocean Territory (unlike other ccTLDs for small island nations like .me or .tv).
"[P]rofits from the sale of each .io domain flow to the very force that expelled the Chagossian or Ilois people from their equatorial land just a generation or two ago: the British government."
from The dark side of .io: How the U.K. is making web domain profits from a shady Cold War land deal.
- 2017-07-10 The .io Error – Taking Control of All .io Domains With a Targeted Registration
- 2017-11-09 Stop Using .io Domains for Production Traffic
- 2018-08-19 Jonathan LaCour's page advocating for donations to support the Chagossian people
- How domain registrar can kill your business - problems with .io registrar
- Global .io TLD outage - problems with .io TLD