Beckman Institute DNS Domain Renaming Project

Overview of Project
For Web Sites
For Email Servers
For Other Servers or Computers
Helpful Resources

Overview of Project

To help build the Illinois brand, the campus has undertaken a project, led by the Office of Public Affairs at the direction of the Chancellor, to rename Domain Name System (DNS) domain names from <domain>.uiuc.edu to <domain>.illinois.edu. As part of this project, the Beckman Institute Information Technology Services (ITS) group has undertaken a project to rename DNS domain names within the Beckman Institute from <group>.uiuc.edu to <group>.beckman.illinois.edu. Together these projects will affect most web addresses and email addresses. The emphasis is currently on web and mail servers, which should be updated in a timely fashion, but will eventually affect all computers. There are documented and proven ways to accomplish this with minimal adverse affect, with the ultimate advantage being stronger brand recognition for the entire campus and for the Beckman Institute. Please note that going from "<group>.uiuc.edu" to "<group>.beckman.illinois.edu" involves exactly the same steps as going from "<group>.uiuc.edu" to "<group>.illinois.edu". Adding the ".beckman" to the domain name does not affect the process in any way.

ITS will assist research groups and administrative units through the transition. For each server, ITS will make the necessary changes to DNS to assure that the new address works as expected and that traffic intended for the old address is properly directed to the new address. ITS will help email administrators and web site administrators make the appropriate alterations to their email servers and/or web servers so that they will function properly with both the new and the old address. ITS will also help web site administrators make these changes in a way that will minimize any adverse effects on search engine page rankings. For a web site using relative internal links, these changes amount to a few lines of code in a configuration file. For a web site using absolute internal links, a search and replace should be done for the domain name also. ITS will help email administrators make the changes in a way that will prevent any loss of email. A list of relevant links to informative web sites regarding these issues is at the end of this document.

For Web Sites

The tried and true way to change the domain name of a web site and have the page rankings automatically transferred from the old site name to the new site name is to use a "HTTP 301 status code permanent redirect". This is the method recommended by Google and by the illinois.edu project team. This method was used to move the Beckman Institute web site from "beckman.uiuc.edu" to "beckman.illinois.edu" very successfully, and has been used successfully by many departments across campus. This method will tell a search service crawler that is crawling the old site that these pages are equivalent to the pages on the new site and that the page rankings from the old site should be shared with the new site. This ensures that page rankings do not slip as a result of the change. Adding the new site using Google Webmaster Tools will tell Google that there is a new site and it should begin to crawl the site. If this step is skipped, Google will eventually discover and crawl the site but it might take a few weeks. Neither Yahoo nor MSN have as sophisticated a system as Google, but they do indicate that they will honor the permanent redirect and copy the page rankings to the new site. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most sites will not experience any problems but a few sites might experience a brief dip in page rankings and these rankings will recover in several days.

This may also be a good time to address other issues that can affect site rankings. One such is making sure that "www.<group>.beckman.illinois.edu" and "<group>.beckman.illinois.edu" are recognized as the same site, if they are indeed the same site, and that page rankings are shared properly. There may also be other simple tweaks to the site that can help in search engine optimization to actually improve the page rankings, such as verifying that all pages have proper internal links. This would also be a good opportunity to look for graphics or logos that do not meet current campus standards.

For all web sites:

Coordinate DNS changes with ITS
Make appropriate permanent redirect changes (see links below for apache or IIS)
Check web site for presence of absolute internal links and update as necessary
Test web site using new domain name
Where practical have others change inbound links to your site
Add new site name to Google Webmaster Tools account
Wait a few days and use Google Webmaster Tools Stats and Diagnostics to check for crawl errors

For Email Servers

For email, the situation is fairly straightforward. ITS will make the necessary change to DNS to allow mail to be sent to the new domain name. The mail server application will need to be configured to accept mail for the new domain name. See "Updating departmental e-mail servers" link below and follow link at bottom of page for the appropriate mail server program (sendmail, Exchange, etc.). If you are using CITES Spam Control, inform ITS. ITS can help coordinate with CITES to make the appropriate changes in CITES’ configuration for your server. Users' reply-to addresses should be updated as appropriate. It is highly recommended to use “<netid>@illinois.edu” as the reply-to address for all users. Campus has committed to supporting this for the foreseeable future and it has the advantage of allowing a single address to be used during one’s tenure at the University.

For email servers:

Coordinate DNS changes with ITS
Make appropriate changes in email server program
Contact ITS if using CITES Spam Control
Update users' reply-to addresses (recommend “<netid>@illinois.edu”)
Test
Notify others of new address

For Other Servers or Computers

While the emphasis is currently on web servers and email servers, eventually all computers will be affected by the change. To this end, all computers are eligible to be moved to the new domains. If you are responsible for computers within the Institute that you would like to move to the new domain(s) or are bringing a new computer online, ITS will be glad to work with you to move or place these computers in the new domain(s).