Oct 07, 2026 18:10:00

example.com, famous for being 'almost completely empty,' has undergone a major redesign, now supporting six languages, and comes with a warning: 'Do not use it for testing or monitoring.'

The website 'example.com,' familiar for its descriptions and program samples, underwent a major redesign on September 28, 2026. For many years, example.com was known as a simple page that remained largely unchanged, but now it supports multiple languages and has added icons. IANA explains that the reason for the changes is 'to improve the usefulness of the page while reducing data usage.'

Example Domain

https://example.com/

Example Names
https://www.iana.org/help/example-domains

Example.com Just Launched The Biggest Redesign In Decades | DebugBear
https://www.debugbear.com/blog/example-dot-com-redesign-history

To avoid the problem of accidentally specifying a real third-party domain when a descriptive URL is needed on the internet, the IETF reserved 'example.com,' 'example.net,' and 'example.org' as example URLs in RFC 2606, published in 1999. According to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which manages these, example.com can be freely used in descriptive materials and other documents.

example.com itself is a domain created in the 1990s, and for many years, accessing it has displayed a short explanation such as 'This domain can be used as an example document.' Because the page's role is simply to display explanatory text, it is considered one of the simplest websites on the web.

The history of example.com can be viewed on the Wayback Machine. For example, the image below shows example.com as of January 2002. It displays a message stating that 'various domain names are reserved for '.com,' '.net,' and '.org',' and provides specific examples of various reserved names.

In 2013, the page was redesigned into a simpler version that remains relevant today, and minor changes to the wording and design have continued since then. In 2025, a warning was added advising users to avoid using the site for business purposes.

The September 28, 2026 update added a mechanism using JavaScript to switch the explanatory text between English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish every 5 seconds. Instead of changing the entire string at once, it treats each character as an individual element and slightly staggers the display timing to implement a smooth language switching animation.

However, a few days later, on October 3rd, the animation was removed, and the layout was changed to display the explanations for each language together from the beginning.

While the amount of information on a page increases with multilingual support and other factors, IANA also takes into account the high volume of data traffic unique to example.com. According to IANA, example.com receives a very large number of visits, particularly from automated programs, which generate a significant amount of traffic. Therefore, they adopted a structure that keeps the basic page content small and separates additional content into a separate JavaScript file. IANA explains that since most automated accesses do not retrieve the JavaScript file, this reduces the amount of data sent from the server.

One reason why example.com might be accessed is that when copying sample settings to actual settings, users sometimes forget to change 'example.com'. Developers may also use example.com directly to check network connectivity or test HTTP requests, but IANA has stated that it does not provide HTTP services on example.com for production or monitoring purposes. Providing an HTTP server itself is not essential to example.com's original role, and is merely operated as a guide for users.

In fact, in September 2024, IANA discontinued support for HTTP methods such as POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH on example.com and other sites. Requests to these sites will now return a '405 Method Not Allowed' error. At the time, IANA also cautioned against designing software that relies on the existence of HTTP services on example.com.