web address
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A web address is a more friendly and understandable way to refer to a domain name and what is preferred both in the Web sign-in user experience, and in New York Times articles about domain names, and may sometimes be called a DNS handle, domain handle, or internet handle.
Articles
- 2000-01-03 NYT: Talk About a Pricey Web Address
- 2001-11-01 NYT: BASICS; Web Addresses Sprout New Suffixes, Needed or Not
- 2014-09-25 NYT: The Rush Is On for Web Addresses That End With Panache
Alternatives
domain handle
DNS handle or Domain handle is using a domain name as a user identifier, and is how user identifiers work in IndieAuth and ATProto.
- "domain handle" has been recently popularized by Bluesky
- 2025-02-06 Gravatar blog: How to Set Up a Custom Domain Handle on Bluesky
internet handle
- "internet handle" has been proposed as a term by the site https://internethandle.org/
criticism of handle term
The term "handle" when used to mean an "address" or "alias" of some kind, is online-culture jargon and not readily obvious to typical online users.
No one in practice says "email handle" for example, they say "email address".
It's a a bit of a metaphorical stretch to explain a "handle" is something you "hold onto" or "pull on" to open a door (presumably to an online service or the internet) or worse to "hold onto" someone else. People don't have handles except in a derogatory sense.
Saying "internet address" instead of "internet handle" also doesn't work for this use-case because early on, "internet address" was an alias for "email address".