1. Who is allowed to use ANGLICAN.ORG?
Every diocese, province, national church, seminary, religious order, religious
community, and society that is in communion with the See of Canterbury
is entitled to use ANGLICAN.ORG. Administrative details (how
do you use this name) are in the section "Using
ANGLICAN.ORG". Technical and legal details (who is allowed
to use this domain and what parts of it are they allowed to use) are in
the section "Naming Rules".
If a parish, parish church, or cathedral wishes to use ANGLICAN.ORG,
it must work through its diocese. Top-level names in ANGLICAN.ORG are
not available to parishes or cathedrals.
2. What does it cost?
Nothing. All costs are absorbed by the Society of Archbishop Justus. The
costs are not large, and they are shared across the entire Anglican communion,
worldwide. Under some circumstances we will charge for the
use of our computers for web hosting, but we will never charge for
the use of the domain name.
3. How can you afford to provide free Internet service?
We aren't providing Internet service. That is provided by your ISP
(Internet Service Provider). But instead of you registering a domain like
DIOCHEDDAR.ORG or CHEDDARDIOCESE.ORG for the Diocese
of Cheddar, you would be given the domain CHEDDAR.ANGLICAN.ORG
which you or your ISP would use in exactly the same way that they would
use any other domain.
4. We already have a domain and it's paid for. Can we use both?
There is no technical problem with using both names. One of the reasons
that things have names is to make it possible to talk about them, and
when a thing has more than one name, it is not always clear just what
is being talked about. But if you want to have both names, you can have
both names. If we learn about a web page for an Anglican diocese, province,
or country, we will link up the appropriate subdomain of ANGLICAN.ORG,
so, in truth, as soon as we learn about your page it will already have
two names.
5. We really like our existing domain name DIOCESEOFNOVOSIBIRSK.ORG
and we don't want to change.
We understand about not wanting to change. After all, you're an Anglican.
The purpose of domain names is to help people find you on the Internet.
If they can't puzzle out your name, they can't find you. The best way
for them to be able to find you on the Internet is for your domain name
to be sensible and compatible with a global naming scheme.
6. Global naming scheme? Do tell. Sounds oppressive.
It's not oppression, it's just organization. The naming
conventions for ANGLICAN.ORG are a simple set of rules designed to
prevent a worsening of the situation.
7. What about parishes? What about mailboxes for individuals?
When a diocese is allocated a subdomain, they can do with it whatever
the Bishop and his staff feel is appropriate. If they want to allocate
sub-subdomains to parishes, that's fine. If your diocese has the administrative
manpower to manage subdomains for parishes or mailboxes for individuals,
you are certainly welcome to set up names or mailboxes for parishes or
individuals. We at the Society of Archbishop Justus have come to believe
that you are better off having each parish get Internet access in their
local marketplace and not to attempt, at this time, to coordinate tightly
with diocesan Internet use. It is always nice, of course, for the diocesan
home page to include links to its member parishes, and vice versa.
8. Shouldn't I use my country's national domain instead of .ORG?
The domain ANGLICAN.ORG is a reference domain for all of the
Anglican dioceses, provinces, and national churches in the world. Every
country, province, state, region, and continent currently has different
naming conventions available via its local Internet service providers,
and these change from time to time.
Uniformity in naming is vital if we are to communicate a unified Anglican
Communion to an increasingly Cyber-oriented world. And uniformity in naming
cannot be achieved under ISO national domains.
Partly the reason is historical. In Canada the national church and a couple
of dioceses are named under anglican.ca; other dioceses are named in other
ways. In the US the national church is dfms.org. In England it is church-of-england.org;
in Australia it is anglican.org.au. And so forth; for each of the countries
and provinces of the Anglican communion there are local conditions that
affect naming.
Partly the reason is political. Think about poor Wales and Scotland. If
England were to register ANGLICAN.UK, then what would Wales and
Scotland do? There is no ISO country code for Wales and Scotland, because
they are not technically countries. But The Church in Wales is indeed
the Anglican church of Wales, and the Scottish Episcopal Church is indeed
the Anglican church of Scotland. They cannot use the ISO codes because
their countries stopped existing when the United Kingdom was formed.
Partly the reason is geographic. The Church of the Province of Southern
Africa encompasses quite a number of countries. While it could use the
country code of one of its constituent counties, like South Africa (ANGLICAN.ZA;
it uses the Afrikaans name of Zud Africa for its abbreviation) or Mozambique
(ANGLICAN.MZ) or Angola (ANGLICAN.AO), that would not
properly represent this large multinational province.
ANGLICAN.ORG is a worldwide domain that covers the entire Anglican
communion with a consistent naming scheme that is not sensitive to changes
in country naming, ISO rules, service providers, or local conditions.
It can be used as an overlay on top of local names, such as ANGLICAN.CA,
or it can be used as the actual name, as in the case of IRELAND.ANGLICAN.ORG
or MONTREAL.ANGLICAN.ORG. Its purpose is to allow people to find
quickly the church function that they are looking for, by using the same
simple naming scheme worldwide. Every country, province, and diocese in
the entire Anglican Communion has a name in ANGLICAN.ORG, and
people can find what they are looking for more easily by using that name.
9. So what do we do to get our domain?
First make sure you are allowed to use it; see "Naming
Rules." Then read the section "Using
ANGLICAN.ORG," or send email to technical@justus.anglican.org
explaining what you want, and we'll get right back to you. If you have
a technical expert available, put them in contact with us.