“To open a website with a .fr domain, you simply need to live in France and be of legal age,” explains Loïc Damilaville, deputy director-general and head of the Communications and Development Service at AFNIC (French Association for Internet Naming in Cooperation). This organization, a law 1901 entity with about forty employees and a thousand members, is responsible for the administrative and technical management of .fr domain names.
This domain name has been available to individuals only since June 20. Previously, it was reserved for businesses, associations, and institutions, meaning entities identifiable on public databases. There are already 450,000 .fr sites online. “It’s not been a rush since Tuesday, nothing comparable to .EU. We have registered 30,000 requests from individuals,” notes Loïc Damilaville.
What does this change? In fact, not much. The .fr helps alleviate the overcrowding of .com. A second advantage is that individuals can now have an email address with their surname without using @aol.fr or @hotmail.fr (e.g., vincent@trinquat.fr). “Individuals who create their website now have a choice. They’re not rushing to create their web site right now but at the time of registration, they prefer the .fr which allows them to identify with the country. The risk is that by delaying, their domain name might already be taken,” adds the deputy director-general of AFNIC.
AFNIC controls and validates site names, but hosting providers put the site online. Anyone can do it and at a reasonable rate (starting from €10). AFNIC checks whether the names are not racist, threatening to minors or public order, or defaming a third party. The name must not already be taken. For this, it’s enough to check on https://www.afnic.fr/ or https://www.faites-vous-un-nom.fr/
The .fr has had a modest start in France, far from the success in our European neighbors. Indeed, there are 10 million “.de” in Germany, of which eight million are individuals and 5 million “.co.uk” in Great Britain. But all it takes is for all French bloggers to change their site name to approach the numbers of the Germans and British. The “.fr” or “.com” currently seems like a minor detail.
