Picture the scene: it’s a Saturday morning, I’ve just had my coffee, and I think it’s time to finally set up a personal website. A perfect little weekend project, maybe I can do it all in a day.

So I go to Namecheap where the domains for all my other side projects languish and try searching for bmcgee.ie. What I see in the search results is not something I’ve encountered before: Unsupported TLD.

Wtf?

So I google “How to register a .ie domain?” and come across the website We Are Ireland Online which has this rather helpful guide on how you can register a .ie domain. And as it turns out, Ireland operates a managed registry for .ie domain names

If you want to register a .ie domain name you must prove you have a connection to Ireland. You can only use an accredited registrar, and the big boys like Namecheap et al aren’t included.

Fair enough I suppose. So after looking through the list off I go to LetsHost and go through the process of buying my domain. It was all fairly standard, except for the warning that after checkout I would be asked in a follow up email to provide supporting documentation for my connection to Ireland.

And there it was, a few minutes later, an email asking that I upload my supporting documents. It didn’t say what documents I needed to provide, it only had a pre-canned link for myconnection.ie. But after a quick search I found the requirements here and decided the simplest solution would be to upload a copy of my passport.

But I wasn’t finished.

As I was trying to change the nameservers for my newly minted domain, or so I thought, I kept getting an error in the control panel:

An issue was encountered while updating the domain nameservers. Please contact support.

I created a ticket, and a few minutes later (kudos to LetsHost 👏) got a response:

Hello,

Thank you for your email. The domain bmcgee.ie is not yet fully registered.

I can see that you have uploaded documents directly to the .IE Registry via myconnection.ie for your domain. The .IE Registry have received same and will process them for you shortly. You should expect to receive an update from the .IE Registry on this within the next working day.

Once the domain is fully registered, you will be able to update nameservers.

Remember how I said it was a Saturday? 😞 So much for getting this all done in a day.

If you didn’t know though, now you know. Not just any Tom, Dick or Harry can register a .ie domain name. Oh no! You have to be an Irish ☘️ Tom, Dick or Harry 😉.

– Update: 2022-11-21 –

Since you are able to read this, I was in fact able to prove I am Irish enough for the registrar. 😉