For consistent brand recognition and user experience, we highly recommend hosting your website on our "www.uab.edu" or "sites.uab.edu" domains. However, if your unit or entity has an established, purchased domain name we can help facilitate its management and renewal. At the request of UAB administration and Information Technology, we have begun the process of migrating all third-party domain management to UAB Digital Strategy and Marketing (DSM). DSM will have oversight of the all domain names held by users across campus. This includes having final approval of all domain names based on factors such as clarity of meaning, similarities to other campus entities' names, as well as other marketing directives.
Current Third-Party Domain Name Holders
If your group currently has a domain name registered at GoDaddy, EasyDNS, or another registrar, you will need to begin the process of transferring your existing domain registration to DSM for management. This should cause little to no downtime of your site and should be of no cost to you if your domain registration term has not expired. Allowing DSM to manage your renewal will help prevent unexpected interruptions of service sometimes caused by a change of responsible party within your team or just overlooking a renewal notification alert among your other emails. The handover process involves either sharing the login credentials for your current domain registrar with us so we can handle the transfer to our registrar or DSM can provide you with instructions for how to do so yourself. You'll still be responsible for any fees associated with renewing the domain name, but once transferred to us, we can simply bill your department for these fees through Oracle on a yearly basis.
Users Considering the Purchase of a Custom Domain Name
Contact DSM to discuss whether purchasing a domain name is the right decision for your group. We may have other solutions to help you achieve your goals with resources already available here at UAB. If you do decide to purchase a domain, we will handle the set up with our preferred domain registrar and facilitate connecting the new domain name with your website either on a UAB platform or approved third-party domain host. From there, DSM will manage your domain name renewals for as long as you choose to keep the registration active. As with existing domain name registrants, your unit will still be responsible for any fees associated with renewing the domain name registration, but DSM can simply bill you for these through Oracle.
Other Considerations and Notes
Domain name registration and domain hosting are different, but sometimes bundled together as a single product.
Domain name registration is basically leasing the right to use selected words on a specific top level domain (.com, .net, .biz, etc.) for a period of time to point users to your website. For example, if you register "uabwidgets.com" for a year, this entitles you to exclusive rights to use that name/domain to direct users to a specified website located anywhere on the internet for that amount of time.
Domain hosting refers to providing the actual physical location of your website's data, usually on a cloud-based service for an agreed upon amount of time for a fee. UAB will provide free hosting of your site on one of our platforms—currently Joomla or WordPress—based on your needs and site purpose.