OurDomain

Domain names, explained for the people who share one

ourdomain.org

Domain names, explained for groups

A shared domain name usually sits quietly in one person's account until the day that becomes a problem. OurDomain explains how these names work and how a group keeps hold of one.

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Somewhere in most small organisations there is a domain name that nobody has thought about for years. It was registered one evening by the member who was good with computers, paid for on a personal card, and pointed at a website that has since been rebuilt twice. Everything works, so nobody asks. Then that member moves away, the card expires, and a rowing club discovers that the address printed on its boats, its shirts and its letterhead belongs, on paper, to somebody who left the county three winters ago.

OurDomain is written for the people who end up dealing with that: treasurers, secretaries, chairs, and whoever inherited the folder of passwords. The subject here is not web design and not marketing. It is ownership. Who holds a name, what holding it actually means, how it stays renewed, and how it passes from one pair of hands to the next without anything going dark in between.

The mechanics come first

Most confusion about domains starts with a single misunderstanding: that a name is bought the way a shed is bought. It is not. A domain is a registration that runs for a fixed period, has to be renewed, and is administered by three separate parties that are easy to mix up. The basics section covers what a domain really is, how a registration comes into existence, what nameservers do all day, and why a change to a website can look broken for an afternoon and then quietly repair itself.

Paying is not holding

Paying for something is not the same as being recorded as its holder. When a lockout or a disagreement happens, a registrar looks at one field, the registrant of record, and pays very little attention to anyone else. The ownership section explains that field, how it is changed, what a move between providers involves, why waiting periods exist, and why email is usually the first thing to break when a name changes hands.

Names that belong to a group

A choir, a village foundation or an allotment society is not one person, and its domain should not behave as though it were. The groups section deals with access shared by several people without a password taped inside a cupboard door, with renewals that survive a change of treasurer, and with the awkward question of whether the account should sit with the organisation, the chair, the webmaster or the agency that built the site.

When something has already gone wrong

Names lapse. Names get taken. Occasionally a name a group has printed for a decade turns out to be held by somebody in another country who is open to a conversation about it. The trouble section walks through the stages that follow an expiry, who can still recover a name at each stage, how a dispute procedure actually works, and how a name held by somebody else is bought in practice, whether privately or through a marketplace such as Tappaya where holders publish the names they are willing to sell.

For anything that needs looking up in a hurry, the notes section holds a glossary of the vocabulary, two checklists and a set of short answers to the questions that come up at meetings.

The basics

  1. What a domain name actually isA domain is closer to a licence plate than to a plot of land. Knowing what is actually held makes renewals, transfers and disputes much easier to follow.
  2. How a domain registration worksRegistration looks like a purchase and behaves like an application. Following the steps makes it clear who holds what afterwards.
  3. Registry, registrar and registrantThree parties stand behind every domain. Knowing which one can act on a given problem saves weeks of misdirected correspondence.
  4. DNS in plain EnglishA domain name holds no content. It points at things. Understanding the pointing explains most of what looks like a broken website.
  5. Extensions and what they signalThe ending of a domain carries meaning, some of it earned and some of it assumed. A few extensions also come with conditions attached.
  6. Renewals, expiry and how names slip awayVery few names are lost deliberately. They are lost because a notice went to a mailbox nobody reads and a card that no longer works.

Ownership

  1. Who owns a domain nameThree people can each reasonably feel they own an organisation's domain. A registrar recognises only the one written in the record.
  2. What to put in the registrant contactThe registrant field is the closest thing a domain has to a deed. Filling it in carefully takes a few minutes and saves years of difficulty.
  3. WHOIS, RDAP and what is still publicLooking up a domain used to reveal the holder's name and address. It no longer does, but a lookup still answers most of the useful questions.
  4. Transferring a domain to somebody elseTwo different moves are both called a transfer. Confusing them, or doing them in the wrong order, can lock a name for weeks.
  5. Handing a domain to the next committeeDomains are rarely lost in a dramatic way. They are lost in the gap between one volunteer leaving and the next one working out what existed.
  6. Keeping email working when a domain movesA website that goes down is noticed. Email that goes down is worse, because messages are refused and nobody sees what was missed.
  7. Moving an organisation to a new domainChanging a domain is not a switch but an overlap. The old name stays useful long after the new one is in place.

Clubs and charities

  1. Naming for clubs and associationsA name that looks fine written on a whiteboard often falls apart the first time somebody has to say it out loud. The tests that matter are the ordinary ones.
  2. What .org means, and what it does notThe .org ending carries an association with causes and membership bodies that it never formally earned. Knowing where that association came from makes it easier to judge when the extension is the right choice.
  3. Domains for charities and foundationsA charity can lose control of its own address without anyone doing anything wrong. It usually happens because the name was registered by whoever was building the site that week.
  4. Who should hold the domain accountEvery domain sits in somebody's account. The choice is usually made without discussion, and it decides who can act when something goes wrong years later.
  5. Shared control without chaosShared access usually means one password known to several people, which is neither shared nor controlled. There are calmer arrangements that survive a change of committee.
  6. Keeping renewals from lapsingAlmost every lost club domain was lost by accident. The renewal was nobody's job, the reminder went to a mailbox nobody opened, and the card on file had already expired.

When it goes wrong

  1. What happens after a domain expiresAn expired domain does not vanish on the expiry date. It moves through a sequence of stages, and the options narrow at each one until they run out entirely.
  2. Recovering a lapsed domain nameA lapsed name is usually recoverable, and the work is mostly administrative rather than technical. The order of the steps matters more than the speed of any one of them.
  3. When the wanted name is already takenFinding the perfect name registered to somebody else is the ordinary condition of the domain system, not bad luck. What matters next is establishing what kind of holder is on the other end.
  4. Approaching the owner of a domainA first enquiry about a registered name decides how the rest of the conversation goes. Most of them fail because they say too much rather than too little.
  5. Buying a domain somebody else holdsBuying a registered name is a private transaction with no central register of sales and no fixed price. The mechanics are simple once the two sides have agreed.
  6. Trademarks and domain namesA domain register and a trademark register are two separate systems that never consult each other. A name can be perfectly available in one and already spoken for in the other.
  7. The UDRP dispute procedure explainedThe UDRP is a narrow administrative procedure for clear cases of abusive registration. It is not a general remedy for wanting a name that somebody else already has.

Notes

  1. Glossary of domain termsThe vocabulary of domain names is small but unforgiving, and most of it appears for the first time in an email that needs answering. These are the terms that matter.
  2. Handover checklist for a domainMost lost domains are lost at a handover that never happened. This is what should physically move when the person who held the name steps down.
  3. Checklist before choosing a nameA domain name is chosen in an evening and lived with for a decade. These are the checks that take an hour now and save a rebrand later.
  4. Questions about owning a domain as a groupEighteen questions that come up whenever a committee looks properly at the name it has been using for years, answered as briefly as the subject allows.