How To: Use Invitations #

Invitations are created by @handles managing domains (e.g., dads.lol) to allow other users to claim handles on domains (e.g., nick.dads.lol).

When receiving an invitation, the first thing you’ll need to do is log into Aviary. Logging in is required because Aviary will attempt to automatically update your handle using API calls to your PDS with the handle you claim.

Once you’re logged in and on the invitation page, the next thing to do is choose a handle. We can’t make that decision for you, but there are some limits that you should be aware of.

1. Your handle cannot contain slurs or hate speech. Regardless of who the domain manager is or the domain being shared, we actively discourage hateful, hurtful, and inflammatory handles.

2. Your handle must be a valid, fully qualified domain name. There are some limits imposed, but the short answer is that it must be at least three characters long, can include dashes ("-"), and must start and end with a letter or number.

3. We discourage people from claiming commonly used subdomains like “email” and “admin” to avoid confusion with the domain’s official accounts. See the Invitations help page for more information on configuring invitations and bypassing these defaults.

4. Domain managers can create and configure invitations to include additional criteria for allowing or disallowing handles and patterns of handles. For example, they can disallow handles ending in a number to encourage uniqueness.

When you choose and submit the form with the handle, you must confirm the handle as it will be displayed and set. For example, if you submit “nick” for the “dads.lol” domain, the confirmation will be for the “@nick.dads.lol” handle.

After confirming and submitting the form, the required API calls will be made behind the scenes. We strongly believe that DNS is the best choice for handle resolution, but it can be a bit finicky, and not all DNS providers are created equally.

In most cases, the DNS records will be set and resolved immediately, and your handle update will be made with your PDS. At that time, you’ll get a success message indicating this, and you’ll be good to go.

The Handle Did Not Resolve Fast Enough #

Sometimes, DNS needs an extra minute to propagate changes. DNS is a global-scale, distributed protocol that sometimes takes more than a few seconds.

If you see a message warning that the DNS records did not immediately resolve, don’t worry. You can use the Checkup Tool to see when the DNS changes finish propagating periodically.

When it looks like the changes have taken, you can log in and go to the dashboard. You should see a notice that there is a record for your handle, but you are not currently using it with a call to action to retry updating your handle.

You do not need to and should not retry with an invitation.