School domains - who do I talk to?

[garethEds]

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.

 

We are in the process of getting our second .sch.uk domain name to reflect our bi-lingual school status.

 

So we currently have: swansea.sch.uk which is our LEA.

 

We are getting abertawe.sch.uk which is the Welsh name of our LEA.

 

The English language one will point to the english side of our new website and the Welsh will point to the Welsh language side.

 

However, we are only about to have email with the english domain name. Nobody has explained why. Anyone care to for me?

 

Cheers

 

GJE

[john]

I cannot see why you can only have the "english" email as it were, the new domain just needs its MX settings setting to the ones for the english domain and the mail server that deals with the english domains emails needs its settings adjusting to allow it to accept and send the mail for the welsh address. Obviously you would only normally be sending out against one address though but could publish both. I worked at a place that had emails as school.org.uk on the letterhead etc as its short and sweet but we also had school.lea.sch.uk which due to the school name was huuuuuuuuuge so we accepted mail to both and had accounts on both so it all worked fine and if you got them mixed it up it still came to my inbox etc but it was set to go out as school.lea.sch.uk

 

(hope that lot makes sense!)

[garethEds]

I cannot see why you can only have the "english" email as it were, the new domain just needs its MX settings setting to the ones for the english domain and the mail server that deals with the english domains emails needs its settings adjusting to allow it to accept and send the mail for the welsh address. Obviously you would only normally be sending out against one address though but could publish both. I worked at a place that had emails as school.org.uk on the letterhead etc as its short and sweet but we also had school.lea.sch.uk which due to the school name was huuuuuuuuuge so we accepted mail to both and had accounts on both so it all worked fine and if you got them mixed it up it still came to my inbox etc but it was set to go out as school.lea.sch.uk

 

(hope that lot makes sense!)

 

Thanks John, I'll take that to the LEA and ask if we can have it.

 

They use Exchange 2007 so hopefully it can be done.

 

GJE

[john]

Should be a simple job for them, mine was in exchange and I have it set that the Accept list had both domains in it and then you choose which you want to appear as when you send out as you can only send out as one.

[GrumbleDook]

not forgetting schools that change name due to the town going from three tier to two tier, must be more of an issue with a few northants schools becoming academies, although my understanding is that these will completely ignore the .sch.uk domain and do their own thing

 

Some of the recent changes are a pain in the neck. You can only have one .sch.uk domain per school unless there is a special arrangement (the welsh names are one such arrangement and about time) so when you move from schoolname A to schoolname B you get a few months of running both before Nominet tell you to close the other one down.

 

It is pretty easy to get most mail systems to accept alternative domains to drop into the equivalent mailboxes but some suppliers may charge for this so you get a school that merges and within 6 months their old domain will not accept emails, creating some havoc occasionally. Then, if you consider two schools merging you end up with some staff who cannot have their old email address and it all gets a tad political (2 S Smiths is one example I have seen elsewhere).

 

In Northants we are farly lucky as there is yet another separate email system for head@, bursar@ and SENCO@ email addresses for official communication with schools, so if a school does naff up their domain we are still sorted. It just makes it difficult to get messages to other staff at times.

[matt40k]

I generally don't like schools have .co.uk or whatever. Ok, I accept having them as well if, say you rent out the football pitch or whatever so long as you still have the .sch.uk. I know... just the way I am.

 

[RANT]

Also, Capita Dinner Money, that annoys me, far enough Capita want to Ad DM7, but argue, a new domain and it's in PHP!! Don't get me wrong I love PHP, it's just Capita is ASP, why change? It is a nice site tho. Place your bets if Capita Dinner Money exists in 10 years.

[/RANT]