I am pleased to let you know that you can now have a custom domain on a free
online groups site. This enables you to customise a free site to better reflect
your organisation.
When you start a site with OnlineGroups.Net, it uses a subdomain of
onlinegroups.net. As an example, our demo site uses the subdomain
'demosite.onlinegroups.net'.
http://demosite.onlinegroups.net/
We deliberately chose our domain so that you it would make sense with your
brand. For example, if your subdomain is 'citydanceclub.onlinegroups', this
looks like the online groups for the City Dance Club.
You may however want your site to look even more strongly associated with your
organisation. If you have your own domain, you can have your online groups site
on that domain, for free.
Continuing my fictitious example, if you owned the domain 'citydanceclub.net',
you could have your online groups site at the domain http://citydanceclub.net
and with email addresses ending in '@citydanceclub.net'.
If you already have a website at your domain, you can put your online groups
site at a subdomain of your domain, such as 'http://groups.citydanceclub.net',
with group addresses ending in '@citydanceclub.net'.
Here is a real example of an online groups site with a custom domain. The folks
at PeopleAggregator
http://www.peopleaggregator.net
use an online groups site to provide forums for users and developers of their
software. Because they want their online groups site to reflect their own
brand, they have put the site at a subdomain of their domain.
http://lists.peopleaggregator.org/
This way, their online groups are at these addresses.
http://lists.peopleaggregator.org/groups/pa-users
http://lists.peopleaggregator.org/groups/pa-dev
The groups on the site use the custom domain, too. The email addresses of the
two PeopleAggregator online groups are as follows.
<email obscured>
<email obscured>
If you would like a custom domain on your online groups site, please use the
following instructions for setting up a custom domain.
http://onlinegroups.net/sites/features/index.html#custom_domain
A site administrator asked me whether it is possible to change the ID of a
group (ie the left-hand-side of the email address), once a custom domain has
been set up. Unfortunately, it is not possible, but we can change the
right-hand-side of the email address for you.
For example, let's say you have an online groups site for the (fictitious) City
Dance Club.
http://citydanceclub.onlinegroups.net
You have set up a group called City Dance Club Announcements,
http://citydanceclub.onlinegroups.net/groups/citydanceclub_announce
and a group called Dancers.
http://citydanceclub.onlinegroups.net/groups/dancers
Your groups have email addresses that use the OnlineGroups.Net domain.
citydanceclub_announce(at)onlinegroups.net
dancers(at)onlinegroups.net
You decide to move the site to the a subdomain of domain 'citydanceclub.net'
that you own and use for City Dance Club. Following the instructions for
setting up a custom domain,
http://onlinegroups.net/sites/features/index.html#custom_domain
you make the following changes for 'groups.citydanceclub.net',
Set the A record to 216.98.148.185
Set the MX record at 'smtp.onlinegroups'
and let us know. We at OnlineGroups.Net make the necessary changes, and then
let you know that your site is now at your subdomain.
http://groups.citydanceclub.net
Any new groups that you set up on the site will now use your custom domain in
their email addresses.
group_id(at)groups.citydanceclub.net
The two groups that you already have on your site, however, will still use
their original email addresses. You can choose whether or not to use your
custom domain for them. If you would like your groups to use your new custom
domain, you let us know that, and we change them over to the following.
citydanceclub_announce(at)groups.citydanceclub.net
dancers(at)groups.citydanceclub.net
If the groups already have members and posts you will have to let the group
members know about the new group email address, and web address. If your groups
have lots of members and posts, let us know and we'll set up a redirector so
that posts to the old address will still work. (We can even set up an http
redirector so that links to topics using the old url will redirect to the new
one.)
Any questions, please let us know.
