What we'll do for your church Information to include on your website How to get started with AtMyChurch  
 

At My Church is a service to congregations of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, USA.

Address questions to:
Steve Dennie
Communications Director
302 Lake Street
Huntington, Ind. 46750

Phone: 260.356-2312
Fax: 260.356.3019

Email: 
 

Domains and Subdomains


A domain name is used to find websites and for routing email messages. Domain names consist of up to 64 characters, followed by an extension (usually three letters). You can only use letters, numbers, and hyphens.

These are examples of domain names.

yahoo.com
huntington.edu
anchorpeople.org

A sub-domain adds something to the left of the domain name, sort of like a subcategory:

photos.yahoo.com
business.yahoo.com

Your church's website can use either system: a domain name, or a subdomain. For our purposes here, a subdomain is cheaper, but not preferred.

To use your own domain name, your best bet is to buy a domain which uses one of the major extensions: .com, .org, or .net. Domain names are like really cheap real estate (the Yahoo and Google names were once bought for $35).

Or, you can hitchhike on one of our domains, with your church being a subdomain. You save the cost of buying a domain.

Use the tabs above to learn more about domains and subdomains.

We highly recommend that your church secure its own domain name. There are several advantages, including these:

  • A domain gives you a unique address on the web (www.yourchurch.org).
  • You can receive email at that domain name (john@yourchurch.org).
  • If you want to transfer your site to another server, you can do it easily.
  • The search engines will do a better job at indexing your site.

AtMyChurch can do the following:

  • Help you choose a good domain name.
  • Register the name for you (at Network Solutions).
  • Keep tabs on when the domain needs to be renewed.
  • Configure your settings to point to where your website is located (the appropriate DNS server).

 

If we register a domain for you, it must be for a minimum of three years. The longer the period, the cheaper the cost per year. A one-year domain registration is $35. Here is the cost for multiple years:

3 years: $75 ($25 per year)
5 years: $100 ($20 per year)
10 years: $150 ($15 per year)

As you can see, it's highly advantageous to register a domain for a long period of time. You have one up-front cost, and then don't need to worry about it for many years.

We use Network Solutions to register domains. Why them? Because Network Solutions was the first domain registrar, and we've found it to be highly reliable. All of the UB denominational domains (over 30 of them) are kept with Network Solutions.

 

If you don't want to register a domain name, that's okay. You can be a subdomain of a domain we use with AtMyChurch.

For example, suppose your church is Fairfield United Brethren Church. Your address would look like one of these (with subdomains, you don't put "www" at the beginning):

http://fairfield.unitedbrethren.org
http://fairfield.ubusa.org
http://fairfield.ubchurches.org

Your email would be at the main domain. For instance:

pastorjohn@unitedbrethren.org
pastorjohn@ubusa.org
pastorjohn@ubchurches.org

A major drawback of using a subdomain is that you can't take it with you. If your church wants to create an expanded site and manage it yourselves, you'll either need to secure your own domain or hitchhike on someone else's top-level domain. That would require changing your web address on business cards, letterhead, etc.

On the other hand, if you registered "fairfieldubchurch.com," you could move it to another server or hosting company without changing other materials.