We have recently set up a new website on e-voice, (BirminghamSME) which is functioning very well. We would now like to transfer our old domain name to the new site and whilst we understand that it can be done, we have no idea how to do it, particularly the procedure to shutdown our old site and move the domain name from the the old host. The old site, which has been running some years, was written in basic web language, by a fellow member who has left the society and it is a foreign language to us. So we are a bit in the dark
Is it possible that someone can spell out the correct procedure for this task in a blow by blow WYSIWYG format?
Any help that can be offered would be much appreciated.
Best regards - Birminghamsme.
Any site on Voice can use their own domain name if they wish to, rather than using the e-voice.org.uk domain. For example: www.bonby.org
Voice is not a domain registrar though - you must buy your domain independently from one of the many registrars out there, and configure it to point to the Voice service.
There are fundamentally only two things that need to happen:
- The Voice must be configured to show your site when accessed using your domain name.
- You must point your domain at the Voice server by changing the DNS settings.
Only you can do 2, and only the Voice admin team can do 1.
So, before you configure your DNS settings we recommend you send an email to admin@e-voice.org.uk stating the domain name you want to use with your site. Once they confirm that the system is ready, you can then change your DNS settings.
The method you use to configure your DNS depends on the registrar. Basically though, the aim is that you want to set up www.mydomain.com to be an A record pointing to 46.20.114.134. (where www.mydomain.com is your chosen domain name, of course!)
There are further instructions here in the documentation. Including specific instructions for some common registrars.
Note: this is NOT the same thing as changing your domain's nameservers. The nameservers should be configured however your registrar recommend, and you change the DNS settings for www.mydomain.com.
In your case, I see that birminghamsme.co.uk is registered with UK2.net. I believe that in order to manage DNS settings with UK2.net you need to pay extra for their DNS Management service. If you want to avoid this fee you could transfer the domains to another registrar who offer this service for free. I personally recommend 123-reg.co.uk, who we use for all our domains.
Thanks
Voice Admin
Another thought.
IF your registrar doesn't allow you to change the DNS settings for free, but does allow you to change the nameservers of the domain, then you could use a free DNS service such as ZoneEdit: http://www.zoneedit.com/
The idea here is that you would set up an account on ZoneEdit for your domain, and use it to set up the A record pointing to 46.20.114.134. You would then change the namesevers on your domain to point to ZoneEdit.
More information can be found in the ZoneEdit FAQ.
Thanks
Voice Admin
I thought about moving our old name, but decided instead to use a new name with the domain changed to .org.uk. But it is still a bit confusing (I hope I have got this the right way round - who points at who!)
The instructions say "The dotCommunity service needs to be configured to show your website when accessed with your domain name". My understanding is that you are the one I have to ask to do that. Then I go to 123-reg and do the rest.
I would like to configure e-voice.org.uk/abingdonhydro, so that it can be accessed though abingdonhydro.org.uk. Could you please do the configuring? Or can I in fact do it myself on the Site Domain page?
Also I'm not clear about email - is it possible then to set up an address within that domain, such as info@abingdonhydro.org.uk (mailto:info@abingdonhydro.org.uk)?
Thanks
Richard
Hi Richard,
You're right, that the new Site Domain config page (in conjunction with 123-reg or other registrar) allows you to do everything you need.
The first thing to do is to add www.abingdonhydro.org.uk as a domain using the Site Domain page of your site.
The site will record that you want to use this domain, but it won't actually use it yet until you set up the DNS on 123-reg.
To do that, in the 123-reg control panel for your domain name, go to Manage DNS. Then you want to add an A record for www to point to the IP address of the Voice server - 46.20.114.134. (I'm not sure of the precise links you have to click here, but that's the gist of what you need to do!)
It will take a while for this change to reach everyone, but within a few hours (sometimes up to 24) it will be in use for your site.
There is further help in the documentation, here.
We don't do anything with email - you can configure this independently of Voice using the 123-reg control panel.
Thanks
Voice Admin
Thanks, I did it (more than 24 hours ago) but I must have done something wrong because the web site has disappeared! Both the old address e-voice.org.uk/abingdonhydro and the new address abingdonhydro.org.uk go to the e-voice home page. I did get into my site, twice, by logging in to e-voice then going to it through Your_Account/Groups, but usually that did not work either. The two successes were using Linux/Firefox - no success with Linux/Opera. I checked the Site Domain page and it reported that the abindonhydro.org.uk redirection was OK. Is there something in my web site that e-voice doesn't like...?
Richard
There was a subtle problem, the fix is that I've gone to your site config and changed the domain name setting from "abingdonhydro.org.uk" to "www.abingdonhydro.org.uk". i.e., the same but with the www.
The version without the www is having a redirect done on it by 123-reg, which is what was causing the problem (because Voice was redirecting to the non-www version, then 123-reg was redirecting back again in a loop!)
Telling Voice to use the version with the www means it all works fine.
Thanks
Voice Admin
A PS to the question above: the fix worked, for which thank you, would never have found it. However it led to a further mystery, that it worked with all browsers except Firefox. The solution turned out to be simple - Firefox was still looking at the old address, so it was solved by emptying the cache,
Richard