What happens if you want to create the website address caférenée.be/à-la-carte-menu ? Can browsers and other programs handle accents in a website address, domain name , slug or URL ? Or is the result a 404 page?
Now, the Dutch language is not rich in words and names with accents. The question ‘Can I use an accent in a website address’ is therefore not very relevant if your website is 100% in Dutch.
Accents in a domain name: is it technically possible?
But what if you want to translate your website into French, or We provide you databases with good accuracy & Quality so you can generate quality leads of your targeted customers easily. Ultimately, our goal is to shop help you in providing your company with error-free data. Also, we update our database on a weekly basis. We made the following list depending on our database databases of woich lists or high resolution data base like that. another language rich in accents? In this article I want to provide some clarification. But as you will see, it is not that easy.
Accents in domain names
The first element we’ll examine in this analysis of website address accents is the domain name.
Yes, technically it is possible.
But it may have consequences. I will tell you more about this in the next paragraph.
The problem with accents in a domain name
This is how former Google employee Jonathan Zhang explains it on Quora :
The biggest problem with using an accented domain name (for example, something that uses a letter that looks like this: á) is that the DNS protocol does not support it. Since the DNS protocol only supports ASCII , it turns your domain name into a series of unrecognizable letters and numbers. An example of this would be if your website was Bücher.com, which would be converted to xn--bcher-kva.com, which is called a punicode domain.
And on the Stackoverflow forum we read about the same thing:
The DNS protocol only supports ASCII. Domains with accented characters are encoded to ASCII using Punycode. This means that your domain éxàmplê.com is actually xn--xmpl-0na6cm.com.
It is a certainty that there is a lot of software out there that does not support Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). It is up to you to test it in your environment and decide if the benefits of a rich character set in your domain name are worth it.
What should you pay attention to when you want to place accents in a domain name?
The forumer quoted above gives you a few things to check:
Does your web browser support IDNs? (Probably.)
Do all web browsers used by your website visitors support this?
Does your email server software support this?
Does your email user agent support this? That is, does it work when you configure an email account with an email address like me@vóõrbêeld.com?
Do the mail servers and mail user agent software used by all of your email correspondents support IDNs?
Does your SSH client accept IDNs (myserver.vóõrbêeld.com)?
Does your syslog server support them? Your database client? Your load balancer (if you use names, not IP addresses)?
Do they work in /etc/hosts?
Can your DHCP clients and servers handle accented characters in the DNS domain?
The answer to many of these questions is probably no. In that case, you could always configure the specific software in question with the raw punycoded form of the domain. But as the forumer writes: do you really want to write xn--xmpl-0na6cm.com in config files and look for that string in server logs?
What does this mean in human language? It is probably better not to put accented letters in your domain name.
Photo source: Hitesh Choudhary via Pexels
Accents in slugs
Accents in slugs: is it technically possible?
Yes, technically you can put accents in slugs .
Below I list some things you should consider before doing it.
The problem with accents in slugs
Not everyone uses an accented keyboard, which means that a portion of the world’s population cannot type a web address with an accent (or can only do so with great difficulty, for example by Googling the accented letter first).
As we read in the section on domain names, some browsers, email programs and other software do not support accented letters.
On a website that uses WPML , you have to enter all slugs in HTML code, and not with accents or other diacritical marks (such as the cedilla). This creates more work and prevents your colleagues who do not know HTML from creating slugs.
Photo source: Sergi Kabrera on Unsplash
An overview: advantages and disadvantages of accents in website addresses
These are the pros and cons of accents in website addresses, such as domain names and slugs. You have already read some of these in the texts above.
Benefits of Accents in URLs
There can be no confusion about the meaning of the word.
It is more intuitive for people who know the words with the accents.
It may be better for SEO (although here ‘s an argument why it doesn’t matter).
Disadvantages of Accents in URLs
Not everyone uses an accented keyboard, which means that a usa business fax data portion of the world’s population cannot type a web address with an accent (or can only do so with great difficulty, for example by Googling the accented letter first).
Some web browsers do not support accented letters.
Accents on letters can cause problems with email software, as well as other software.
On a website using WPML , you must enter any slugs with b2c lead accents or other diacritics in HTML code.
Tip: Claim both domain names, with and without accents
Is your company called Vóõrbêeld Houthandel? Then register both vóõrbêeld.be (or .com or whatever) and example.be. Let one point to the other. Whichever version people type into their browser, they will always end up on your site.
Photo source: cottonbro on Pexels
So… can you use accented characters in website addresses?
Yes, that is possible. It is technically possible.
You should keep in mind that accents in URLs are sometimes displayed ugly (fortunately often only in configuration files that are not visible to the average person). And it can cause problems with e-mail programs. So first check whether all your software can handle accent letters in domain names. It can also cause more and more complicated work when creating slugs because they have to be written in HTML. Ask your website builder or IT person for advice before adding accents to your website addresses.
