University Information Services no longer supports registration of domains not under cam.ac.uk. However, we have a reciprocral arrangement with Mythic Beasts to help make these domains easier to manage.
While it is possible to use any registrar for domain names outside of cam.ac.uk, we recommend that they are registered in Mythic Beasts (and we use this company for our own non-cam.ac.uk registrations).
To allow us to help with recovery of the domain name (if the original registrant should be unavailable for any reason) and help to support other internal processes:
- Create a new account in the Mythic Beasts control panel which will be used to contain your University-related domains.
- Then, add the email address "hostmaster@cam.ac.uk" as a co-administrator of the account. To do this, from the "My Account" page, under "Customer account", select "Account users". Click "Add new user" and enter the email address "hostmaster@cam.ac.uk". Make sure to grant us "Full access".
Customers must be comfortable that UIS has full access to their account, including any virtual servers or websites, so this is probably not suitable for accounts with facilities other than DNS enabled.
If this feature is used, UIS will not handle billing or other general tasks, except recovering access to the domain to transfer it elsewhere (including another Mythic Beasts account). UIS will, however, use it to manage records for other services requested via UIS (for example email). If hostmaster@cam.ac.uk is added as another account in this way, the UIS Hostmaster team will also be able to coordinate internal processes to (for example) add TXT or MX records to enable mail services provided by other teams in UIS.
We used to run a Managed Zone Service in which these domains could be registered, but this closed in October 2021 and all data migrated to Mythic Beasts. Managers of domains were sent information about the process and how to regain management access, post the migration, by email during September 2021.