docboggle Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 I am helping out a Northamptonshire school set up their emails. However, they have not been allocated a .northants.sch.uk domain. Can anyone point me in the right direction as who I need to speak to to get one set up for them?
mb2k01 Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 Here Contact Us - Northamptonshire County Council would be my first guess. They can probably point you in the right direction. 1
GrumbleDook Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 I am helping out a Northamptonshire school set up their emails. However, they have not been allocated a .northants.sch.uk domain. Can anyone point me in the right direction as who I need to speak to to get one set up for them? Back in the office today. Dropping you a PM with my direct number shortly.
matt40k Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 Norm is to contact Nominet. They need a letter headed fax from the school. 1
GrumbleDook Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 Summary of the process. Contact Nominet with your School name, postcode and DCSF number. They will tell you what the domain name is, who holds the tags and then try to charge you for changing things. 1 - If your tag is with Nominet (ie never issued to anyone such as you ISP or other web host) the you should be able to get it released with no charge to the ISP of your choice. This will take a letter-headed paper to be faxed through to Nominet (they will give you the fax number on the line and the contact person for it to go to) and this will set you up with an online account where you can make the changes yourself. 2 - If your tag is with another provider (eg if you previously had your website with company x they may hold the tag still) and you should contact them about releasing it to your new tag holders. They may charge for this as it does require some administration. Contact your new tag holder and inform them of who the outgoing holder is and they should pick it up, put entries into their DNS and so on. If your existing tag holder is not helpful then you can get Nominet to force a change (chargeable) to your new tag holder. 3 - It is possible to have your tags with company X and DNS with company Y. An example would be using a .org domain with an RBC (who use nominet ... and so only deal with .uk domains) then you can have Network Solutions with the tags and pointing to the RBC's DNS setup. Or you can just use Network Solutions' DNS I suppose. For Northants ... please drop me a PM or email as we have a few schools who need this and we are trying to help where we can. 1
docboggle Posted April 24, 2009 Author Posted April 24, 2009 Thanks to everyone, especially GrumbleDook (who now has all of my details, so there is no escape!) I am facing Option 1 of GrumbleDook's post, and was advised by Nominet that it will incur £10+VAT charge. Will try to sweet talk them though
matt40k Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 I am facing Option 1 of GrumbleDook's post, and was advised by Nominet that it will incur £10+VAT charge. Will try to sweet talk them though I though this was completely paid for by the DCSF (or someone)?
plexer Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 If you need nominet to force a change of tagging then you have to pay them for it. Fax the forms pay the money job done. Ben
plexer Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 When we wanted to move from our LEA's provider BT to a 3rd party host the LEA wanted a change request fee of approx £1000 to do it so we took the nominet option. Ben
GrumbleDook Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 I though this was completely paid for by the DCSF (or someone)? The domain is funded by DCSF but administrative changes are not, and this is an administrative change. A few years back Nominet said that they had done their work, sent info out to schools and schools had to respond by a particular date to take control of their domain (ie pass the tags to someone). It's only fair that if a school hasn't done it when there was a fair chance to do so that the schools coughs up some cash to get someone to do the work. Previously I've been able to sweet talk into getting it for gratis, but forced changes always cost! This is not a forced change so I wish docboggle some luck with being a smooth talking bar steward. 1
PiqueABoo Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 (edited) Once upon a time, which wasn't all that long ago, you didn't have "tags" or charges for any of this. Consequently it took me cumulative days of increasingly irritating faffing about with Nominet to get them to change the NS records for a co.uk domain, and of course to do that without sending me a bill. Despite the above comment about Nominet holding unassigned tags, no one, but no one, in that organisation appeared to have the capacity to cope with the idea that *.uk domains that preceded Nominet's existence would not have tag holders - I wasn't an ISP and they couldn't cope. I'm still a bit gob-smacked by this rather special UK arrangement that insists an ISP "holds" the "tag" rather than the organisation. Edited April 24, 2009 by PiqueABoo
EduTech Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 A little bit off topic, but if i wanted to get another .sch.uk domain for our school am i able to do so? The reason i ask, and it sounds so stupid i know but at the moment we are getting the excuse from staff that they dont use there school email as they cannot remember the email address. our current domain is bhtc.sandwell.sch.uk am i able to get another domain name for example bhtc.sch.uk ? or would i have to just get a normal .co.uk James.
mb2k01 Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 A little bit off topic, but if i wanted to get another .sch.uk domain for our school am i able to do so? The reason i ask, and it sounds so stupid i know but at the moment we are getting the excuse from staff that they dont use there school email as they cannot remember the email address. our current domain is bhtc.sandwell.sch.uk am i able to get another domain name for example bhtc.sch.uk ? or would i have to just get a normal .co.uk James. It's not a proper answer to your question, more of a way around that works for me. I had the same claim (grr!) and ended up going to 123-reg.co.uk and buying schoolname.co.uk and setting up forwarding of all email @schoolname.co.uk to [email protected] Works perfectly for us.
EduTech Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 Ah were not the only one then Yeah thats what i was going to do, pain setting up forwarders etc but hey if it shuts them up who cares! just thought i would ask about the sch.uk though. Ta
deanc Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 unfortunately nominet insist that all school address contain the LA name so there is no way of getting around it. you could ask the question of why staff cant remember what the school is called and where it is located!
EduTech Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 Ah right, thats no problem answers my question cheers but yeah, wish we never had so many staff who cant remember a simple email address!!
GrumbleDook Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 Once upon a time, which wasn't all that long ago, you didn't have "tags" or charges for any of this. Consequently it took me cumulative days of increasingly irritating faffing about with Nominet to get them to change the NS records for a co.uk domain, and of course to do that without sending me a bill. Despite the above comment about Nominet holding unassigned tags, no one, but no one, in that organisation appeared to have the capacity to cope with the idea that *.uk domains that preceded Nominet's existence would not have tag holders - I wasn't an ISP and they couldn't cope. I'm still a bit gob-smacked by this rather special UK arrangement that insists an ISP "holds" the "tag" rather than the organisation. hehehe ... I was a registrar at one point to deal with a similar problem. Don't know how or why and it quickly disappeared when the ISP I wanted to have the tags (when they existed) queried it. Between Network Solutions and Nominet there appeared to be a severe lack of clue.
GrumbleDook Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 unfortunately nominet insist that all school address contain the LA name so there is no way of getting around it. you could ask the question of why staff cant remember what the school is called and where it is located! It contains a 'region' name ... not LA. LAs change (the introduction of some more recent Unitary Authorities is an example) but the pre-defined regions don't. They tend to be county in origin but with some exceptions. The other issues are that some schools actually applied for domains ages ago and were given a domain but when Nominet were given lists by LAs the domains were suggested by the LA ... so you could have 2 (or 3) different domains for the same school ... all because someone forgot about DCSF numbers (DFEE/DFES/etc) and using then to check for uniqueness. The other part is that some schools may be primary, junior, infant or nursery and will get schoolname, schoolname-inf, schoolnameinf or schoolinitials or other variations ... it is sometimes hard to dig out what the domain should be. Paperwork that Nominet sent out a few years ago may have been filed in that grey, rectangular thing ... or a change in ICT Co-ordinator / Bursar / Head means people have no idea where things are.
User3204 Posted April 24, 2009 Posted April 24, 2009 If you check with BT and a few other providers, they will do .org.uk for free usually, if you have an xDSL line with them. There's nothing to stop you setting up schoolname.org.uk ast well as schoolname.region.sch.uk.
matt40k Posted April 25, 2009 Posted April 25, 2009 If you check with BT and a few other providers, they will do .org.uk for free usually, if you have an xDSL line with them. There's nothing to stop you setting up schoolname.org.uk ast well as schoolname.region.sch.uk. Personally is ruddy annoys the hell out of me. It costs about £5 for 2 yrs for a .uk (i.e. .org.uk or .co.uk) but these expire and must be re-registered etc. It's a pain in my arse when you go to email a school and they have not renew normally because they haven't paid (Previous IT tech got it on his CC or such). Also, what’s the point of the government (well basically the government) going all schools will have a schoolname.region.sch.uk then schools going against this? It's like wiring a house up and going, no I'm not going to make the blue neutral, I'm going to make it live!! Makes sending emails to school so much easier too, what the region, Suffolk, right so it's schoolname.suffolk.sch.uk, ok bit of choice in what the actual name is (i.e. could be cut down) then it's just a question of working out what there naming scheme is for user accounts (some I wish people would follow also). I don't see the point of having both .co.uk or whatever + the schoolname.region.sch.uk, if you have the .co.uk you don't really want to use it publicly but you know it will, then before you know it you'll be getting the same problem as ranted about above. Sorry for the rant it just one of little things that really get to me.
GrumbleDook Posted April 25, 2009 Posted April 25, 2009 Schools make use of .org, .com, .co.uk or .org.uk due to branding and the fact that they may use the domain for things other than general stuff for the school. I don't really see anything wrong with this as long as it is a long term decision and not just some random idea that someone has had.
john Posted April 25, 2009 Posted April 25, 2009 I hate the length of our domain it makes it so easy to get wrong on the phone, and doesn't at times fit in boxes on forms We will be making use of .org.uk in the near future I hope to reduce this problem. I just got my local primary a .co.uk domain to use instead of the LEA system one so they have more flexibility.
deanc Posted April 25, 2009 Posted April 25, 2009 The other issues are that some schools actually applied for domains ages ago and were given a domain but when Nominet were given lists by LAs the domains were suggested by the LA ... so you could have 2 (or 3) different domains for the same school ... all because someone forgot about DCSF numbers (DFEE/DFES/etc) and using then to check for uniqueness. The other part is that some schools may be primary, junior, infant or nursery and will get schoolname, schoolname-inf, schoolnameinf or schoolinitials or other variations ... it is sometimes hard to dig out what the domain should be. Paperwork that Nominet sent out a few years ago may have been filed in that grey, rectangular thing ... or a change in ICT Co-ordinator / Bursar / Head means people have no idea where things are. not forgetting schools that change name due to the town going frome three tier to two tier, must be more of an issue with a few northants schools becoming academys,although my understanding is that these will completely ignore the .sch.uk domain and do thier own thing
leco Posted April 25, 2009 Posted April 25, 2009 (edited) We were originally issued with sch-ool-name-tier.lea.sch.uk which was utterly unmemorable. The then new head had an ex-pupil set up a web site on schoolnametiers.co.uk which confused things even further. When I was given the chance I contacted Nominet to change our lea name to take out all the hypens and the tier (school.lea.sch.uk) and registered it to the school. Nominet couldn't have been more helpful, I needed a lot of hand holding at the time. Now the RBC hold the tag, host the web site (new one on new name) and I don't have to even think about it any more:) Edited April 25, 2009 by leco slightly re-worded
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now