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IOTA Names

The portal resolves IOTA Names names. A name <name>.iota is served at https://<name>.iotastorage.com/, subnames included:

AddressName looked up
https://alice.iotastorage.com/alice.iota
https://blog.alice.iotastorage.com/blog.alice.iota

How a name points to a site​

A name leads to a site if either:

  1. its website field is the ID of the Site (0x…, 64 hexadecimal digits) or a link to it in a portal (https://<site ID in base36>.iotastorage.com/), or
  2. its target address is the Site itself.

The portal checks the website field first and then the target address. Only Site objects of the sitios package count; a name that does not exist, has expired or points to something else gives a 404.

The simplest option is a subname of a name you own (subnames are free) whose target address is the Site:

  1. Publish the site and copy the ID of its Site (0x…). The app shows it in My sites; the CLI prints it when publishing.
  2. Open testnet.iotanames.com with the wallet that owns the name.
  3. Create a subname, for example blog under alice.iota, and connect it to the address of the Site ("Connect to Address").
  4. Open https://blog.alice.iotastorage.com/.

Using a subname keeps your main name free: if the target address of the main name were the Site, payments sent to the name would go to the Site object instead of your account.

To use the main name without changing its target address, set its website field to the Site ID or to its portal link.

Good to know​

  • The portal remembers the result of a name lookup, also a negative one, for 30 seconds. A change of target takes up to that long to show.
  • If you destroy a site and publish it again, it has a new ID: point the name to the new Site.
  • The CLI accepts a name wherever it takes a site (for example node sitio.mjs mapa blog.alice.iota); it uses the target address of the name.
  • Not yet available: the reverse lookup from the Site to its name, which would require depending on the IOTA Names package.