Moving an organisation to a new domain

Why a name gets retired

Organisations change names for good reasons. Two neighbouring clubs merge. A charity broadens its work and its old title now describes half of it. A foundation registered a name in haste and has spent a decade spelling it out over the telephone. Occasionally the trigger is external, such as a trademark objection of the kind covered in trademarks and names.

Whatever the reason, the domain change is the last part of the decision and the part most likely to be rushed, because it looks like a small technical task at the end of a long process. It is not. Every printed leaflet, every email signature, every link on a partner's website and every entry in a member's address book points at the old name, and none of those update themselves.

Keep the old name

The first rule is that the old registration is kept and renewed, not cancelled. Releasing it saves nothing worth having and creates two risks: visitors who follow an old link find nothing, and the name becomes available to anybody, including parties who will notice that it has an established audience. A retired name that once belonged to a charity is a particularly unfortunate thing to lose to a stranger.

Keep it for years rather than months. The cost of holding a name is small and predictable, and its value as a safety net lasts as long as anything in print survives. Add it to the same renewal arrangements as the new name, and record both in the handover checklist, since a name that nobody uses is exactly the one a future committee will forget.

Redirect rather than duplicate

The old name should send visitors to the matching page on the new one. A permanent redirect is the right instrument: it tells browsers and search engines that the move is final, and it passes the reputation the old address accumulated to the new one. Where the site structure is unchanged, redirect each old page to its counterpart rather than sending everything to the front page, since a member following a link about training times should land on training times.

What should not happen is two live copies of the site. That means two sets of updates, two places for a mistake, and confusion about which address is current. One site, one address, and a redirect from the old one.

Email on the old name

Email needs handling separately and generously. Keep the old addresses accepting mail and forwarding to the new ones for a long period, because address books and standing forms hold old addresses for years. Announce the change in outgoing signatures and in the newsletter well before it happens, and again afterwards.

The technical detail is that redirecting a website has no effect at all on mail. The MX and authentication records on the old domain have to stay in place and correct, or messages to the old addresses will bounce while the website redirect works perfectly. That distinction, and the checks worth running, are covered in keeping email working.

Telling the people who point at the old name

Some links can be updated at the source, and those are worth the effort because they outlive any redirect. The list is usually shorter than expected: the local authority's directory of community groups, a governing body or federation, a couple of partner organisations, the venue that hosts the meetings, and any listings the group appears in. A short message to each, asking them to update the address, takes an afternoon.

Then there is everything the organisation controls directly and forgets anyway: social profiles, printed forms held as templates, membership documents, the signature on a shared mailbox, the address on shirts and signage, and any online accounts that use an email address on the old domain for login and recovery. That last one causes real trouble later and is the item most often missed.

The long tail

Some things never update. A brass band will still receive post addressed to a name it stopped using, and a link in an archived newsletter will point at the old address forever. That is an argument for treating the old name as a permanent low cost holding rather than a temporary bridge.

A last practical point: keep a written note of when the change happened and which name was replaced. Committees turn over, and a successor who finds a renewal invoice for a name nobody recognises needs to know it is deliberate rather than a mistake to be cancelled.