How-to Guides - IT & Internet

Resources for setting up and running community organisations and projects.

Domain name guide

This guide covers many of the daily aspects of domain names that your organisation may encounter including detailed discussions about online branding, domain name scams and the difference between New Zealand and international domain names.

What is a Domain Name
Understanding a domain name
Benefits of a domain name
Choosing your ideal Domain Name
Registering your own Domain Name
Using your own domain name across websites
Use your own domain name email free with Gmail
The dangers of using URL shortners
Free WordPress URL-shortener: http://wp.me
.Tel domain name
Non-English Characters in Domain Names
Domain name scams

What is a Domain Name

A domain name is often called a web address. www.community.net.nz is a domain name that brings you to this website. With out the domain name you would have to rely on a search engine finding the site or memorise a long string of digits called an IP address.

A domain name can also be used for email. As an example theEditor@community.net.nz is a distinguishable email address that is related to this web site as it has the same address as this web site i.e. “community.net.nz”.

A domain name can also be used for a number of other more technical tasks that are beyond the scope of this document.

Understanding a domain name

Domain names can explain many things about a web site content, country of origin and how the site is divided up into sections. All of which create interest in your site and assist search engines to rank your site in there search results.

A domain name is divided up into 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th levels. The levels begin at the end of the domain name. In New Zealand a normal domain name has a 1st, 2nd and 3rd level. For example:

Community.net.nz

.nz is the first level. This is the country code aspect of the domain.

.net is the 2nd Level. This is a preset category of names that a .nz user must choose from.

community is the 3rd Level name that the user has chosen to represent their web site and for people to use to access the site.

There is the option to create a 4th Level to community.net.nz by adding what is often referred to as a sub domain. An example could be ict.community.net.nz .

When 4th level domain names are written the www is not included thus you would see http://ict.community.net.nz . By adding www you would essentially create a 5th Level to the domain name.

With international or regionally dispersed organisations the 4th level domain name is used to separate regional web sites and differentiate between regional emails often by placing the geographic area name in the 4th level.

Not all domain names have country codes such as .nz for New Zealand and .au for Australia. These domain names are called General Top Level Domain (GTLD) Names as opposed to the country versions, which are called Country Code Top Level Domain Names (CC-TLD)

.com, .net, .org are examples of a GTLD. Their structure is a little different, thus:

news.Google.com

.com is the Top Level or the 1st Level domain that is a pre set name that a user decides is best for their web site.
Google is the 2nd Level domain that a user chooses to describe their web site.
News is the 3rd level domain.

It is common with General Top Level Domains to have 4th and 5th levels and is often seen with American Universities.

Information you need to know prior to registering a .nz Domain Name

There are 14 options to register New Zealand domain names. Of the 14 domain names 6 are moderated thus requiring a manual application process to ensure that you meet the relevant criteria. The remaining 8 domain names can be registered by anyone if the name is still available, but some consideration should be given to the suggested criteria for those domain names.

The 6 New Zealand Moderated Domain names are:

.cri.nz - Crown Research Institutes
.govt.nz - National government organisations operating with statutory powers, or, Regional and local government organisations operating with statutory powers
.health.nz - the applicant is a member of the Sector as defined at 1.1 above
.iwi.nz - a traditional Māori tribe, Hapu that belongs to a traditional Māori Iwi or taura here Iwi group operating with the permission of the main Iwi.
.mil.nz - Military organisations of the NZ Government
.parliament.nz - Parliamentary agencies or their common-use acronyms (e.g. ooc.parliament.nz and ps.parliament.nz), Offices of Parliament, such as the Office of the Ombudsman, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the Auditor and Controller General, Parliamentary political party sites, such as labour.parliament.nz, individual sites for elected members of parliament, such as MemberName.parliament.nz

Full criteria details can be accessed from http://www.dnc.org.nz .

New Zealand un-moderated Domain Names are as follows:

.co.nz - Organisations pursuing commercial aims and purposes
.net.nz – Any Internet related organisation or web site.
.org.nz - Not-for-profit organisations
.ac.nz - Tertiary educational institutions and related organisations
.maori.nz – Any Māori related web site.
.geek.nz – A vanity domain for Geeks
.school.nz - Primary, secondary and pre-schools and related organisations
.gen - Individuals and other organisations not covered elsewhere

If you believe that someone else has registered your organsisation domain name, infringed copyright or is committing ID theft via a .nz domain name there is a Dispute Process available at http://www.dnc.org.nz .

Benefits of a domain name

Organisations use domain names for their web sites so that they can be found on the Internet or so that an organisation can use a branded email with their own name as opposed to a free service that advertisers another company. Other benefits include the option to host their own web sites and utilise a number of other Web based resources as discussed below using their branded domain name.

In more rent times ownership of a domain name ensures that you own the information on the site as opposed to the many free web services and networks such as Picasso, You Tube and FaceBook where in the Terms of Service you give away all legal rights to your information by using their services.

Choosing your ideal Domain Name

If your organisation wants to register your domain name with a .org.nz suffix and the name is already taken there are other options other than using the .co.nz suffix which traditionally represents New Zealand commercial entities.

Initially there is the option of manipulating your desired name by adding a hyphen or modifying the term a little.

Alternatively the .org suffix is the next best choice to a .org.nz suffix and is internationally recognised as a Not For Profit/Community suffix. Every international Not For Profit group that is on the Internet will more than likely be found with a .org suffix.

.ORG is also about half the price of a .org.nz suffix and will soon offer extended security to guarantee the authentication of your site and the privacy of your registration details.

Depending on your organisaitons structure a .net.nz may be more suitable if the .org.nz is not available in your choice. But .net.nz has traditionally been used for online promotions and organisations that do not have a physical presence.

Due to the profits companies can make this is a not so well known fact in New Zealand but a well practiced method internationally. There are hundreds of other domain name suffixes available on the Internet and most are available to purchase from specialised domain name companies in New Zealand. Many which are not common, but can be used to create memorable domain names such as the famous international social book marking web site http://del.icio.us . Radio stations could utilise the .am and .fm suffixes as could television production companies with the .tv suffix.

Depending on your organisations main language or organisations initials there are many non English names that can be made from the existing suffixes and organisation branding opportunities.

If you want your organisation to have a web presence only for contact details then the .tel domain is ideal as it functions as an online telephone book. Other popular choices include .info, .am, .fm, .in and .asia.

Alternative names within the .nz suffix:

.co.nz, .net.nz, .org.nz, .maori.nz, .iwi.nz, .geek.nz, .govt.nz, .mil.nz, .cri.nz, .parliament.nz, .cri.nz, .ac.nz, .gen.nz

To see criteria for these please visit: http://www.dnc.org.nz .

A full list of alternatives are below:

.AC , .AE.ORG , .AG , .AM , .AR.COM , .ASIA , .AT , .BE , .BIZ , .BR.COM , .BZ , .CC , .CH , .CN , .COM.CN , .NET.CN , .ORG.CN , .COM , .CX , .CZ , .DE , .DE.COM , .DK , .ES , .EU , .EU.COM , .FM , .GB.COM , .GD , .GS , .HN , .HT , .HU.COM , .IM , .IN , .INFO , .IO , .JP , .JPN.COM , .KR.COM , .LA , .LC , .LI , .LU , .ME , .MN , .MOBI , .MS , .MU , .COM.MX , .NAME , .NET , .NO.COM , .NU , .ORG , .PL , .QC.COM , .RU , .SA.COM , .COM.SB , .SE.COM , .SG , .SH , .TC , .TEL , .TK , .TL , .TV , .TW , .CO.UK , .ME.UK , .ORG.UK , .US , .US.COM , .UY.COM , .VC , .VG , .WS , .ZA.COM

Registering your own Domain Name

Domain Names are registered via the Internet so it is essential that you have a Credit Card and are comfortable making an online transaction. If you do not have a credit card or do not feel comfortable making an online transaction then your organisation could ask your web designer, web host or IT consultant to perform the task for you. But be aware that they will add extra charges for their time to the original cost of the domain name.

Registering a .nz domain

.nz domain names are governed by a non profit organisation called the “Domain Name Commission”. The commissions job is to govern, update policies, ensure a fair market, and ensure there are no disputes with .nz market place amongst other tasks. As part of this role the commission has approved a number of .nz domain name sellers called Authorised Registrars.

When purchasing a .nz domain name you should use an Authorised Registrar as these companies have passed a rigorous technical and business tests to become authorised. A list of all authorised registrars can be found at the DNC web site http://www.dnc.org.nz/story/authorised-registrars .

.nz Domain name prices range from $19 per annum to in excess of $300 per annum. There is no logic that a more expensive domain name is better than a cheaper domain name as they are all exactly the same and reside in the same parent database on the Internet. The cost difference is solely based on income revenue by the individual company and nothing else.

Some companies allow you to transfer your domain name to another company for free and also offer a range of free services such as email, forwarding your domain name and several other free services.

When transferring your domain name you will need to obtain a UDAI via email from your domain name company. This is a free service as mandated by the Domain Name Commission.

International Domain Names

A number of New Zealand companies resell .com and several other domain names. Purchasing such domain names in New Zealand has the added reseller cost of about 50% added to the original price. If you are able to use a credit card on the Internet .com, .org,.net addresses range from NZ$4 to NZ$20 per annum and usually come with several free services.

When purchasing international domain names the same recommendation as with .nz domain names is applicable.

But for international domain names the organisation is called Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN authorise domain name sellers after they pass a strict and costly technical and business evaluation. At present there is only one ICANN approved domain name registrar in New Zealand.

Non English Domain Names or IDN’s

The same advice as with the international names.

Using your own domain name across websites

Many organsiations sign up to the latest social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace creating a list of different addresses to visit the one organisation online.

An organisation depending on its stakeholders will have one, several or all of the following services that all have their own different and unique URL:

Organisation web site - http://www.YourName.org.nz
Blog - http://www.wordpress.com/YourName
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/YourName/242925?ref=nf
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/YourName
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/YourName
Bebo - http://www.bebo.com/YourName
RSS feed - http://YourName.com/rss

If your organisation name is unique and no one has already used it then remembering your multiple addresses may be achievable to some people, but it does take the attention away from your prime investment of your own website and online name contained within your website address.

The solution to increase your online identity and to cause less confusion with your stakeholders while avoiding the issue of another organisation registering your username or worse - hijacking your username, is simply to use your own domain name. It is recommended that you also register (if at all possible) your usernames as described in this How to Guide.

Sub domains and redirects may sound technical and too hard but all that is required from reputable web hosts and domain name resellers is typing names into an online form. Ideally your organisation will have CPnel by default with your website.

Sub Domain

A sub domain is the word used in a domain name before the main part of your domain. An example, http://www.YourName.org.nz is your main address.

Contained within this domain name is the word John http://John.YourName.org.nz .

John is the sub domain. By default your sub domain will also be accessible by end users who put the name at the end of your address ie. http://www.YourName.org.nz/john

In practical terms an organisation that has a social media presence, website and blogs should use a descriptive term. Using the example above:

Organisation web site – http://www.YourName.org.nz
Blog – http://blog.YourName.org.nz
Facebook – http://FaceBook.YourName.org.nz
Twitter – http://twitter.YourName.org.nz
MySpace – http://myspace.YourName.org.nz
Bebo – http://bebo.YourName.org.nz
RSS feed – http://rss.YourName.org.nz

Some organisations prefer to use a free domain name shortening service such as tinyurl.com .

Thereare a number of issues with using such services such as:

They do not help to promote your website or organisation
Search engines generally ignore them
The service is not guaranteed to be free or in existence for the long term
The URL’s are not easy to remember for several sites.

Use your own domain name email free with Gmail

If your organisation has an email address with your own domain name (YourOrganisation.org.nz), Google offers a free email service as part of Gmail that allows you to use your own domain name.

This is suited to organisations who may pay a company for extra email accounts, pay for email, or an organisation that needs the flexibility and generous storage space offered by Google for their emails (7307 Meg).

You will still pay the annual domain name fee to your existing domain name company, but you will no longer have to pay anything for an email service. And if your organisation has several email addresses you can establish several Gmail accounts.

All that is required is that you follow these instructions and inform your hosting company about the intended move which involves little or no work for the hosting company and will not effect the functioning of your web site.

If your organisation also has a website you may want to consider free web hosting at Google for your web site.

GMail offer a number of ways to access and read your email:

WebMail with your other GMail mail
POP3 accounts so that email is downloaded to your desktop
Forwarded to another email address
A combination of WebMail and email to your desktop.

To get started you will need to sign into your Google account and create a Gmail account. You will also need to have access to your domain name email as Google will send a verification code to your email address.

To set up your domain name email follow the instructions below:

Sign into your Gmail account
Click Settings from the top right hand corner
Select Accounts and Imports
Select the button “Send Mail from another address”
Enter your domain name email address.
Enter your Name
When recipients reply to your email and you would like that to go to another email address select the “Specify a different "reply-to" address (optional)” and add your details, otherwise,
Select the “Send Verification” button
Check your domain name email address for the verification email from Google.
Enter your verification code.

You will now be able to send and receive email from your domain name. A list of your email accounts will be listed in the “Settings” area of Gmail. From here you have the option of setting your default email address as either your Gmail account or your domain name email.

Forwarding your email to another account or to download it as POP3 email:

Select the Forwarding and POP3/IMAP tab in the Settings area.
From here you can forward your email and create POP3 accounts.
A configuration help file is available here for most common email clients.

There is a wide range of advanced features for email within Gmail by selecting the “Labs” label. Again these are all still free to use and the relevance of the extra options will vary greatly from organisation to organisation.

The dangers of using URL shortners

Services that shorten URLs (the global addresses of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web) have been providing short aliases (of approximately 14 characters) and the redirection of long URLs to their intended place for the past 7 years.

Originally designed for NewsGroups, the service became popular with the introduction of Blog posts and the often-long default Blog addresses for individual posts. In more recent times there has been an explosion of the services offered to shorten URLs as a result of Twitter and its 140 character limit. With over 200,000 Tweets a week, with many of the Tweets using a shortened URL to business and personal pages, URL shortner services are now mainstream.

http://tr.im, the world's second most-popular URL-shortening service, announced that it will cease to offer free URL shortening at the end of this year. The effect for those who use this service - sites that have been Tweeted about or mentioned anytime with a tr.im URL - will no longer be able to access their site using tr.im but will have to use an alternative service.

Future effects could see the tr.im domain name being purchased and all of your website addresses diverted to other sites for commercial gains or all of your domain names will become redundant.

The most-popular URL shortened .bt.ly recently underwent maintenance which rendered all URLs to the home page of bit.ly that announced the maintenance. This caused a disruption to those who use these services as their users could not access the websites.

Shortening a URL will affect your search engine rankings as key words from your Blog URL or that you include in your URL are picked up by search engines and rankled accordingly. With a shortened URL it is obfuscated, hence it becomes a detriment to your search engine rankings.

Security risks are associated with shortened links. You can not directly see what the site is until you click it. With a full URL you can hover your mouse above it to make sure that it is going to take you to the link that it states.

URL shortening services are commercial entities that require money to offer their free services. As such, it is not uncommon for services to disappear taking your shortened links with them at little or no notice.

Organisations using URL shortening services should carefully consider the risks and benefits of using a free service or using their own domain name with a shortened URL and redirect. If your organisation has no other option but to use a URL shortener service then you should manually configure your URL’s to make them meaningful and search engine- and user-friendly.

A more creative approach is to find a short domain name extension such as .ie and create your own organisation short url that is redirected to appropriate content.

For organisations who already use the suspended tr.im service - which will honour existing redirects on URL’s until at least December 2009 - you should perform a stock take of all of your existing shortened URL’s. Then add a note to each page that the shortened URL will cease to work and offer an alternative URL to the page.

Your organisation will need to check Tweets, Blogs and emails to begin the stock take.

Free WordPress URL-shortener: http://wp.me

The recent announcement hat URL shortner http://tr.im is ceasing to offer its free service has left many community and not-for-profit organisations re-evaluating their URL services. Some re looking at more reliable services including registering their own domain name.

The reason that URL shortening services are so popular is because of the introduction of blogs and various Content Management Systems (CMS) that by default include long and hard to remember URL's. An example is www.community.net.nz/how-toguides/it/publicationsresources/shorturl.htm which could be shortened to http://tr.im/cne

There is an alternative for organisations that use WordPress.com to host their blogs (this is not an option if your web host has your blog installed on their server). WordPress-hosted sites offer a unique http://wp.me URL-shortening service by default. The http://wp.me service is by-default in all of your blog postings.

If you already have a large number of blogs that you would like to access via the wp.me URL, simply follow the instructions below to find what your wp.me url is.

To access the wp.me service you will need to do the following:

Exisiting blog posts -
Edit your blog and click on the “Get Shortlink” button next to the address of your post.

New Blog Posts -
Upon writing your blog post click the “Get Shortlink” button.

Considering this is a built-in feature of WordPress, it will be available for as long as WordPress is available. This makes it more reliable and stable than the other URL-shortening services that offer no guarantees of their continued existence.

.Tel domain name

.tel is a domain name extension for your personal or organisation contact details such as telephone, mobile, fax, address etc.

Your details are all be stored on a template site that requires no web development skills or web hosting agreements, just a control panel to add your information into. You could think of .tel as an electronic contact card that you can update and customise for professional or personal contacts.

By default the .tel site is accessible and readable by any device that has an Internet connection such as a computer with a web browser, iPhone, BlackBerry, PDA, cell phone, PSP etc.

For an organisation, only one registration is required. For example if your organisaiton is called "Test" you could register Test.tel then assign all of your staff sub folders or addresses hence creating an up to date online telephone book. For example if John, Sarah and Peter were your staff members there .tel sites could be john.Test.tel, sarah.Test.tel and peter.Test.tel of which would all be accessible via the main organisaiton site at Test.tel .

You can add web site addresses, social media addresses, email, Instant Messaging details, Twitter details, Blog details, interests, links to Google Street View or Maps of your office and almost anything else that is relevant for someone to contact you or you or your organisation.

If your organisation does not speak English or speaks several different languages .tel accommodates this by accepting non-English characters. An organisation could easily offer their .tel space in bi- or multi-lingual formats.

Costs could be reduced for your organisation's business cards by offering a plain card with the organisation's .tel address. If your organisaiton changes phone providers, loses a cell phone or even moves premises this information can be quickly and freely updated. The cards recipient could then go to the organisation's .tel address and select the person/people they want to contact.

.Tel is also optimised for search engines thus offering your organisation yet another valuable avenue to be accessed via search engines.

As with any public information or web site, organsiations and individuals need to be cautious about what information they put in their .tel space. If you do not want the world to know your home phone number then omit it in your .tel space.

Profiles are available so that you can change certain information that is available at different times. For example if you are leaving the office for a period of time and you will not have access to your office phone number you can create a new profile that will show only your contact information while you are away.

Non-English Characters in Domain Names

Non-English Language web addresses - or as they are known globally “Internationalized Domain Name” (IDN) - is a domain name or web address, represented by local language characters such as Māori or Asian characters. Recently such domain names became a reality and are now able to be registered.

This allows Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Māori, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian and many others characters to be written in the domain names used by New Zealand organisations. For example http://www.鱿.com and http://한국.icom.museum.

To visit IDN web sites you should have the latest version of your browser (see links below). Currently browsers will direct you to an IDN website but some may display the address in the address bar with code that begins with http://xn--. http://www.xn--9u6a.com/ is the same as http://www.鱿.com.

This is called punycode and will display if your browser can not display the non-English character. It is also an alternative method for writing your IDN address if you are unable to write the non-English characters or want to reach an audience that may not speak or write the language of your IDN. If your language has similar characters in a different language set then using punycode will reduce potential security issues.

One local example of an IDN security issue is with Māori language. For many years people have used an umlaut and a Māori font to create a macron. Umlauts are able to be registered in domain names. The security issue will occur if you visit www.mäori.com and have a Māori font installed as a default font in your browser, www.mäori1234.com will appear as www.māori1234.com . Two very different sites.

For anyone that uses Māori fonts and keyboards you should make sure that you are using the latest keyboard from Microsoft or www.maorispellchecker.net.nz . Also ensure that you have deleted all of your Māori fonts as they are no longer required to render a true macron.

There are a number of online converters that will convert from punycode to IDN. One such example is: http://mct.verisign-grs.com/index.shtml .

It is important to note that this functionality is not yet available in the .nz domain name space. It is anticipated that for Māori Language Week 2010 users will be able to write the 5 Māori macrons in .nz domain names. Other non-English characters may be introduced at a later date.

At present there is only one company selling such domain names within New Zealand but most large international domain name resellers are selling IDN’s and can be found in a Google search.

It is important to use the latest available Internet browser to ensure you can view IDN’s.

Download the latest Browser

Internet Explorer
www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

Mozilla Firefox
www.mozilla.com/firefox

Google Chrome
www.google.com/chrome

Opera
www.opera.com/download

Safari
www.apple.com/safari/

Domain name scams

Over the years there have been several different kinds of domain name scams via email. Typically, an organisation will receive an email claiming that there are a certain number of domain names being held in dispute. The email goes on to offer you the first opportunity to purchase the domain names while they are in dispute.

Another scam is where your organisation receives an email from a company your organisation do not deal with claiming that your domain name is overdue. If you are in doubt you should contact the company that you registered your domain name with.

Recently an email scam has been circulating offering a number of domain names with various Asian extensions such as .asia, .hk etc.

Typically, once you agree that you want the domain names the person or company that sent you the email will then register the domain names and sell them to you at highly inflated costs.

The next catch is that your organisation would not own the domain names, instead the domain name would only be redirected to your site while ownership remains with the other person/company. It is then not unusual to be held to ransom and asked to pay higher prices at frequent intervals.

There are several NZ web companies that offer to resell international website addresses. These companies can also advise you on your options as can the information in this guide.