This page explains how you can claim and use your name in ANGLICAN.ORG.
In other words, how you can make it so that the name (for example)
will deliver the home page for the Diocese
of London. Whatever your diocese, province, national church, or order,
there is a name waiting for you, and you have several options for how
to claim it.
First make sure you are in fact entitled to a name. The overall summary is listed in our page "Naming plan". The intricate and specific details of what organizations are and are not allowed to claim names in ANGLICAN.ORG are listed on the page "Naming rules". Note that parishes do not get top-level names in ANGLICAN.ORG; the policy is listed in a section of those Naming Rules.
Next make sure you are talking to the right people. We allocate names in ANGLICAN.ORG, such as XXX.ANGLICAN.ORG and YYY.ANGLICAN.ORG. If you want a name that is part of one of those firstlevel domains; for example, if you are in the Diocese of Ohio and you would like NEWS.OHIO.ANGLICAN.ORG, you should direct your request to the Diocese of Ohio and not to us. If you aren't sure to whom to direct your request, we will be pleased to help you.
If you do not know what an ISP is, see the section "Choose an ISP". See the "Web hosting" section for more information about servers, sites, and such.
When you have determined which option you would like, or if you have questions, please contact our Technical Group at this email address: technical@justus.anglican.org. If you have forgotten who we are, or what "our" means, look at the "About this web site" page.
Option 1: Your web pages on an ISP near you, and your domain name managed by us.
Most of the dioceses in ANGLICAN.ORG operate by arranging for an account and service from an ISP that is local to their diocese, but getting their domain name from us. If you choose this option, you would arrange for Internet service locally, but instead of paying that ISP to register some domain like diocese_of_oldcastle.org, we would configure your_diocese.anglican.org so that our web server directs your traffic to the server location created by your ISP. As you will note, the name your_diocese.anglican.org connects your diocese clearly and unequivocally to the Anglican Communion. There will be no wondering what kind of a diocese yours is.
If you upload your web pages onto a local ISP's server, we will need to know the IP address that your ISP has assigned, so that we can point your diocese's ANGLICAN.ORG domain to that address. 'Point' means that when people type your_diocese.anglican.org in a web browser, they are transported seamlessly to your diocese's web pages. Even though the URL for your diocese's web pages on the local server may be http://www. localserver.com/ ColumbiaDioceseHome.html, only the name your_diocese.anglican.org will show up in the location area of the browser. That's 'pointing'.
Option 2: Your entire web site on the SoAJ server
If your diocese is penurious and is willing to cope with our utter lack of a technical support staff, we can, for now at least, host your pages here on one of the Justus server computers. If every diocese in the world takes us up on this offer we will collapse under the load of administrative work, but for now we're willing to do this to help get things moving because we think that Diocesan web pages are a very good thing. Click here for more information.
SoAJ is not an ISP, so we cannot offer individual email service. We can route a small number of mailboxes, such as webmaster@your_diocese.anglican.org and bishop@your_diocese.anglican.org, so that they forward somewhere else. Since we aren't an ISP, alas we cannot offer extensive technical support, although we'll certainly help you get your web pages up and running.
If you want more control over email, or if you want to use complex form submission, your web pages will need to be on your computer or on a dedicated computer at your ISP. If your diocese puts web pages on our server now, and later decides to expand its use of the Internet (for example, to include more extensive email service for the diocese), we'll work together to design and implement a smooth transition plan from our computers to yours.
Option 3: Your web pages on a local ISP, your anglican.org name managed by that ISP
This is the option that will seem most sensible from the point of view of the average ISP, because this is how they handle their usual commercial accounts, and they know how to work this way.
If you choose this option, then we'll need to know the names or IP addresses of the primary and secondary name servers that your local ISP is using. If you wish to pursue this option, we can explain in more detail how it would work. It is usually easiest for us to work directly with the technical support staff of your ISP, though we're happy to keep you involved in the conversation. Have them contact us via email at this address: technical@justus.anglican.org
Other options for technology-intensive dioceses
If your diocese is sufficiently technological to be able to manage its own LAN and its own servers, there are several more options for running diocesan pages. If you are technologically experienced enough to be able to make them work smoothly, then you probably already know what they are, so there's no point discussing them in depth here and now. But, in summary, your other options are to treat your diocese like a small business, and make an enterprise connection to the Internet, either through a firewall at your office or through a premises router operated at your offices. We at the Society of Archbishop Justus would be happy to consult with you on the various ways of doing this, though if you need our help, you would probably be better off using Option 1 or Option 3.