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When you want your site to become more public then it is good to change your URL from the one that you were given initially of https://croquet-websites.org.uk/<club-name> to something like https://<clubname>croquetclub.org.uk. If you already have your own “domain” typically because you already have or have had a website then you can skip the first step of getting a domain.
Getting a domain
Find a suitable name
Consider what you would like the URL of your club to look like. Domains are arranged in a tree structure. As your club is a UK organisation it is rather natural to have it sitting under org.uk. So if your club name is for example Blewbury Croquet Club then you might like to be blewburycroquetclub.org.uk . The name should be descriptive and must be unique. If somebody else has already purchased the name you want then the simplest solution is to try a different name. It is unlikely that “cyber squatters” will have bothered to purchase a croquet club name however.
If you want to make your name more readable, and as spaces are not allowed, then you can separate words with hyphens (minus signs). Avoid the use of underscores as web searches work much better with hyphens. The domain would then look like blewbury-croquet-club.org.uk. A domain name is case independent so you could advertise your club in the form BlewburyCroquetClub.org.uk however it would really still be blewburycroquetclub.org.uk.
Domain names ending in .uk are all administered by Nominet. You can go to their whois service to see what is available. In addition they administer .wales and .cymru which might be attractive for Welsh clubs.
Register the name
You don’t register the name directly with Nominet but you need to go through a registrar – and you become the registrant. We would recommend Fasthosts.
It is important to note that you don’t buy the name for ever but just register it for a period. After that period has expired somebody else might decide to purchase the name and then try to sell it to you. A registrar will generally give you an auto-renewal option which you should take advantage of to avoid the inconvenience of losing the name which people have grown to recognise. It will cost you about ten to twelve pounds a year. You may be able to get a discount for paying for a longer period.
So go to Fasthosts and create yourself an account then register a domain. Select the option to “Just register your domain” and don’t buy any web hosting. Some registrars will refer to this as a “parked domain”.
Once you have paid for your domain you must then go and set the domain nameservers correctly. You do not want to use the Fasthosts nameservers but rather to use the three Green Geeks nameservers:
- ams-ns1.greengeeks.com
- chi-ns1.greengeeks.com
- chi-ns2.greengeeks.com
To change the nameservers if you are using Fasthosts then go to the Fasthosts Dashboard (there is a “Back to Dashboard” home button at the top left). Scroll down to “Domains” and click on “View Domains”. Then click on your domain name. Ignore the message in red about SSL certificates but instead click on “Manage nameservers”. Now select “Specify name servers” and enter just the three name servers listed above. The fourth and subsequent nameserver names should be blank. Finally click on “Update Name Server Details”. These detailed instructions are likely to become out of date if Fasthosts changes its website.
You can go to the Nominet whois service again and enter your domain name and you should now see your domain with the name servers listed there.
If you already have a domain
If you have a domain already then all you need to do is to change the nameservers to the three Green Geeks nameservers and submit a ticket as descibed below:
- ams-ns1.greengeeks.com
- chi-ns1.greengeeks.com
- chi-ns2.greengeeks.com
Submit a ticket
If you change your nameservers to point to Green Geeks initially nothing will work. This is not a problem for a new domain but breaks things for an existing domain. So please submit a ticket giving the name of your new domain and a time will be negotiated to make the change. At the appointed time you will change the nameserver, and update the ticket. Then we will make the necessary changes to the website configuration and update the ticket again inviting you to update the reCAPTCHA configuration and offering to provide email services as described in the next two sections.
Final Steps
reCAPTCHA configuration
The reCAPTCHA is system was developed by Google to protect websites from “spam bots” . While your site was under the croquet-websites.org.uk domain the reCAPTCHA configuration would have worked fine as keys had been set up on the original website from which your website was cloned. Now you need to set it up for your domain. reCAPTCHA is used on the form which people use to register on your site. Google do change the interface from time to time so you might find it a little different from what has been written here – in that case please submit a ticket.
From the Dashboard go to “Settings/WP Members” and select the Captcha tab. Then in another browser tab or window go to https://google.com/recaptcha/admin .
You should find these three icons at the top right. Click on the +.
Then provide a label – this can be anything you like – perhaps the name of your club. Select “Callenge (v2)” as the type and accept the default “I’m not a robot” and specify your domain. You may then need to click on a blue “Submit” button. To see the keys you may need to click on “reCAPTCHA keys”. Go back to the page or tab with the WordPress site, enter the site and secret keys keys and click on “Update CAPTCHA Settings.
Logout and check that the registration form has the widget shown here.
Email services
You may wish to have a few email addresses of the form secretary@<your-domain-name> or webmaster@<your-domain-name>. Mail forwarding is no longer supported – instead mail accounts can be created which you must manage.
The person or persons dealing with that account need to configure an email client to send and receive email. If you wish to request this then raise a ticket specifying the name of the email account, such as webmaster@<your-domain-name>. I will create the account and send you the password to access that account to be given to the person operating the email account. If the password is lost then submit a ticket requesting a new one.
There is a server: mail.<your-domain-name> which is able to send email using SMTP and provide access to the email it has received using either IMAP or POP3. IMAP is the newer protocol and is able to allow you to access email without moving it – which is useful if more than one person is operating the account or one person has more than one client configured. POP3 normally operates by moving email to the clients computer and removing the copy on the server. The server is configured to hold 250Mb of data – so don’t let it fill up.
There are a number of clients available. For each one you need to specify how to connect to the mail server referring to the following to access an account called webmaster.
Username: webmaster@<your-domain-name>
Password: will be provided
Incoming and outgoing server: mail.<your-domain-name>
IMAP Port: 993
POP3 Port: 995
SMTP Port: 465
If you are a gmail user then follow these instructions. This approach works very well for most gmail users. The only problem I know of is that it only supports five extra accounts. Otherwise you have a number of possibilities according to your OS.
Windows:
- Microsoft Outlook (comes with MS Office)
- Mail (this is available on anything after Vista and replaced Outlook Express and is probably easier to use than Outlook)
- Mozilla Thunderbird
Linux:
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Evolution
Mac OS
- Mozilla Thunderbird
iOS
- Microsoft Outlook (comes with MS Office)
- Spark Mail (Not free)