It kind of makes me think of how odd it would have been if many of the old forums named themselves like bookclub.phpbulletin.com, metalheads.vbulletin.net, or something.

There's nothing wrong with doing that, obviously, but it's struck me as another interesting quirk of fediverse instances/sites. Generally as soon as you visit them you can tell by the site interface or an icon somewhere what software they're using.

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 41 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (11 children)

Each fediverse service needs its own domain and cannot share with others.

So we put them as subdomains, (service).domain.com, so we can run multiple under the same top level domain.

The majority of Fediverse instances are run by volunteers at their own cost or subsist strictly on donations. Domain registrations can get expensive and are a variable recurring cost*, so subdomains (which are free) are the natural choice. That also leaves the apex doamin available for other purposes.

*The cost to renew each year can change and often goes up.

[–] antizero99@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

When it goes up you can usually transfer to another provider for a decent discount. I recently did this with one of my domains when godaddy went nuts on a renewal for a domain I've had for like 10+ years at this point.

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