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After a pilot test involving a dozen colleges and units, the illinois.edu domain was opened to the general campus community Nov. 1 to begin moving Web site addresses from uiuc.edu to illinois.edu.
The Illinois Domain Project is part of a campuswide branding initiative that aims to heighten recognition of the Illinois brand among key audiences nationally and internationally, broadening opportunities for education, research and public engagement.
Beginning Nov. 1, units can “turn on” their illinois.edu Web sites by requesting illinois.edu domain names and registering host names. Units with an existing address in the uiuc.edu domain will be granted rights to the same name ending with illinois.edu, but they must submit illinois.edu domain name request forms using the Customer Specific Domain Name Request Form provided at http://illinois.edu/goto/dnsform.
Once all required information has been submitted, units can expect their DNS entries to be created within two weeks, at which time the submitter will be notified by e-mail.
After Nov. 1, new uiuc.edu domain names will no longer be created; however, units with existing uiuc.edu addresses will be able to continue registering hosts in those domains.
To assist units considering new domain names, Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services and Public Affairs have developed DNS Standards that include naming guidelines, with attention to audience, marketability, intuitiveness and brand support. The standards are available on the Web at www.cites.illinois.edu/dns/standards.html.
“The pilot phase was an important first step in the domain change process as it provided an opportunity to uncover and address some potential problems, such as security and log-in issues,” said Michele Raupp, project manager. “What I’m hearing from other people is that they think it is going very smoothly. They are ready for the domain name change to happen, to get it done and get on with their other work. Our goal is to help them get through it as painlessly as possible.”
As domain names are created on the illinois.edu domain over the next several months, information technology staff members in campus units will be working to ensure that all campus Web sites are accessible on both their uiuc.edu addresses and their illinois.edu addresses, with the preferred method being a permanent redirect that automatically reroutes a person typing in a uiuc.edu address to the new illinois.edu page.
Once the naming phase of the project has been completed, which is expected to be in the spring, IT staff will spend the following year updating all links and references on all of the secure Web sites, and a second year updating all the non-secure Web sites.
“All units have to work in lock-step on completing Phase One, so that when Phase Two begins they aren’t breaking connections to any of the other sites,” Raupp said.
The transition to the illinois.edu domain began in the spring, when e-mail addresses for campus users were activated on the new domain. The e-mail transition is still under way and project team members expect to complete it by the end of 2008.
