Email forwarding?

[Koldov]

Hi,

 

We have recently moved broadband supplier to a new all singing and dancing grid.

 

We also have our old LEA learning platform mail solution.

 

Also we have a separately purchased domain name.

 

The issue is, that at some point we intend to move away from the LEA mail solution (the domain name of the email address was a mouthful anyway), but the new grid email address is very generic, has numbers and dots in the username and just uses the grids domain which bears no relevance to the school name.

 

I have been told I can use our separate domain name as an email forwarder, by changing the MX records with the registrar to point to our new suppliers domain and create an individual alias for all the staff members within the grids framework (this will also use the alias as a 'from' address too).

 

I logged on to the registrar's website portal to do this, but found an email forwarding section as well, which seems simpler (we don't have any email hosting with them that I know of, but there is a section that says there is existing MX records with our domain name), however I'm thinking that the forwarding option will not be able to do a 'from' address or any other features if we are not using their mail servers/service?

 

Also, the MX record part has sections that I do not have information for - Sub-Domain- -Mail Server- -Priority- (I was told just to point it to MX.domainmail.org) silly me for thinking it would be that simple...

 

So I'm a little confused as to which part does what and the best option to choose (or if there is any difference). HELP!

 

Does anybody know which is the best, most resilient and future-proof way of doing this?

 

Is this just two ways of doing the same thing or are they separate sections for a reason?

 

Kol.

[Julian]

What is your domain name? It is usually helpful to have your email address the same as your domain name (end users know that they are speaking to you!).

 

We own "joa.herts.sch.uk", so all emails are [email protected]. We are using Google as our email provider, so the MX record for the joa.herts.sch.uk DNS lookup (held by Herts CC), points to Google mail servers. Before Google we were using Microsoft, then the MX record pointed to the Microsoft mail servers, but the end user address did not change.

 

What I am trying to say is that you can decouple the email address, and the provider, and change provider, without changing your email address.

[Koldov]

Thanks, that's great!

 

Used the registrar's MX records to point to our new suppliers domain and all is good.

 

As you say we can alter that at anytime and point it to a new provider as long as we keep the domain name we're golden!

 

Interested in the .sch.uk domain thing though... I did some Googling and found that we should have one (the bit I saw said every school was given one), but how do we find out?

 

Kol.

[Julian]

Nominet (Nominet - The Official Registry for UK Domain Names) manage the .sch.uk domain (for DFE).

 

School ip address are in the format school name . county . sch .uk (with no spaces), your LEA will be managing the DNS server for county . sch . uk, they may be able to help.

[twin--turbo]

Nominet (Nominet - The Official Registry for UK Domain Names) manage the .sch.uk domain (for DFE).

 

School ip address are in the format school name . county . sch .uk (with no spaces), your LEA will be managing the DNS server for county . sch . uk, they may be able to help.

 

At my old place we binned our .sch. as it was far too long. When I sugested an alternative to the management they were quite happy with "s.....s.net" . However we accepted mail for both domains.

 

When we merged and academised we ended up with 3 former schools domains and another 5 or 6 domains all dropping to the same mail accounts ( our prefered domain name was @WXYZ.org.uk... Senior managagement insisted on r...................t.org.uk TOOOOOOO LONG!!

 

 

My personal mail at home goes to one of 4 domains, but ultimatly to the same mail account.

 

TT

[Koldov]

Hmmmmm....

 

Nominet want a letter signed by the head (understandable) and then to charge us £10 + VAT to "add an administrative email address to your existing account" so we can change the registrar tag ourselves....

 

Nice little earner for something the government wanted all schools to have and what with Nominet being the only registrar that deal with the .sch.uk domains?

 

Kol.

[Blue_Cookeh]

Hmmmmm....

 

Nominet want a letter signed by the head (understandable) and then to charge us £10 + VAT to "add an administrative email address to your existing account" so we can change the registrar tag ourselves....

 

Nice little earner for something the government wanted all schools to have and what with Nominet being the only registrar that deal with the .sch.uk domains?

 

Kol.

 

Our .sch domain is currently hosted with Eclipse Internet, it was never with Nominet as far as I'm aware since it was ported over from (the very ancient) NTL years and years ago.

 

I would check if your domain is actually showing as registered, if not then just go and get it from someone like 123-Reg. Nominet are a pain in the butt.

[Julian]

Nominet mange .uk domains, they do not do hosting, when a company like Eclipse Internet register a co.uk domain name, they register the name with Nominet.