OurDomain

Domain names, explained for the people who share one

Section

Reference notes and checklists

Short reference pages for looking something up quickly, rather than reading an explanation from the beginning.

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The rest of OurDomain is written to be read through. This section is written to be consulted. It exists because most domain questions arrive at an inconvenient moment: five minutes before a meeting, or in the middle of an email exchange with a provider, when what is needed is a definition or a list rather than an essay.

The glossary covers the vocabulary that appears in registrar emails and support articles, the terms that look technical but are usually simple once stated plainly. Auth code, nameserver, redemption period, MX record, registrant of record, TLD. Around thirty entries, alphabetical, each explained in a sentence or two, which is generally enough to work out whether a message from a provider is routine or urgent.

Two checklists follow. The handover checklist lists what actually moves from one volunteer to the next, item by item, with a line explaining why each item matters. It is intended to be printed and worked through with the outgoing person present, because the questions that matter are the ones nobody thinks to ask once that person has stopped answering messages. The naming checklist covers the other end of the story: the checks worth running before a group commits to a name, from spelling it over a bad phone line to establishing whether anybody else has a claim to it.

The questions page collects the things committees genuinely ask. Whether a domain can be registered to an unincorporated club. What happens if the treasurer's card is refused. Whether a website disappears when a name is transferred. Whether an old address can keep forwarding after a rename. The answers are short, and each points into the fuller explanation for anybody who needs it.

Nothing in this section is a substitute for the reasoning behind it. A checklist followed without understanding tends to be followed once and then quietly abandoned. For the reasoning, the ownership section covers who holds a name and how it moves, and the groups section covers the arrangements that keep it in the hands of the organisation rather than an individual.

In this section

  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.