Domains and Web Hosting
We hosted an NLA IT Q&A session focused on migrating away from the anonymous email service on Tuesday 11th February at 6pm. View the slides.
Table of contents
About Domains
We currently provide all Nightlines with <uni>.nightline.ac.uk domain names, which are managed by the Nightline Association and used widely across all Nightlines for a variety of services. When the Nightline Association is closed, these domain names will cease to exist.
If you currently use a <uni>.nightline.ac.uk domain name for your website and committee emails, you must start migrating to a new domain.
Even if your Nightline has a custom domain (like yournightline.org.uk), you may still be using a separate <uni>.nightline.ac.uk for some other services, including Portal and IM, Google Workspace and/or anonymous email.
Many Nightlines use our Managed WordPress service to host their website. If this applies to your Nightline, to run your Nightline’s existing website after the Nightline Association closes you will need to migrate to an alternative WordPress hosting provider. Alternatively, we also have some recommendations if you would like to rebuild your website with a site builder alternative.
Timeline and key dates
| Date | What happens |
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We will be holding a Q&A on domains and web hosting. Joining information is available on Slack for Nightlines and the Portal event calendar. |
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We hope to have all Nightlines migrated to alternative domain names. Existing names will (temporarily) redirect to new domain names. |
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All |
The end of your.nightline.ac.uk domain names will also coincide with Nightlines no longer being able to use officer@your.nightline.ac.uk email addresses. You can find out more about how we are decommissioning these domains on the Google Workspace page.
Technical overview
An Internet domain name is the cornerstone of an organisation’s online presence. The domain name system (or ‘DNS’) is the global network of domain name servers that hold domain name records (or ‘records’ for short). These DNS records relate the human-readable names like bbc.co.uk to the numerical IP addresses like 192.0.2.14, which are used by computers to communicate.
A working domain name setup is critical for your Nightline’s website and email to keep working properly. Even though some Nightlines already have a custom domain name of their own, every Nightline currently depends on the Association’s domain (nightline.ac.uk) in some way, whether for a website, committee emails, or just to run their service (with Portal/IM and/or anonymous email).
We’re handling Portal/IM and anonymous email separately due to their bespoke qualities and a lack of commercially-available equivalents, so this page does not cover them in detail.
Most Nightlines rely on a Nightline Association-provided domain name (<uni>.nightline.ac.uk), which cannot continue after the Nightline Association closes. Registering a new domain name for your Nightline, if it doesn’t already have one, is essential. This involves paying an annual subscription to a domain name registrar, which is a company with the necessary connections to make your Nightline’s new domain name a part of the global DNS. Your Nightline then ‘owns’ that domain name for as long as it pays the annual fee (more like rental than ownership). You can transfer to a different registrar later. Practically every registrar runs domain name servers for free for its customers, so you’ll manage your domain name records through the registrar’s web control panel. Depending on the registrar and top-level domain (TLD), the annual price varies, but for popular TLDs like org.uk, co.uk, uk, com, and org, prices are currently around £7.50 to £20 per year.
What we currently provide
The Association owns the nightline.ac.uk domain name, and one of the core IT services it has provided to Nightlines is a subdomain for each Nightline, such as gallifrey.nightline.ac.uk for (fictional) Gallifrey Nightline. Many Nightlines use this as their only domain name.
In general, the term ‘subdomain’ refers to any domain name which is created underneath another one. For example, portal.nightline.ac.uk is a subdomain of nightline.ac.uk.
We are forced to shut down the nightline.ac.uk domain name because it is issued specifically to the Association and it is unlikely that the organisation that issued it, called Jisc, which governs all ac.uk domains, would allow for it to be transferred permanently to another owner.
This means that any websites, email addresses and domain names under nightline.ac.uk will have to migrate to an alternative domain as soon as possible.
We are currently exploring the possibility of nightline.ac.uk operating as a ‘redirection-only’ system that would forward website and/or email addresses to their replacements, to be run for a limited period of time on our behalf after the Association’s closure, but we stress that this is not something we can guarantee will be possible and it would never be allowed by Jisc to run indefinitely, so it can only be a stop-gap measure to smooth out an inevitable transition.
Most Nightlines rely solely on their Nightline Association-provided <uni>.nightline.ac.uk domain. This means that for most Nightlines, a significant part of your IT transition during the Association’s closure will involve migration to a new domain name. See Migrating to a new domain name below.
For all Nightlines, IM services use the portal.nightline.ac.uk domain, including any links or QR codes to start a new IM chat as a caller. We don’t address this challenge in this document, because Portal and IM services deserve their own treatment due to their Nightline-uniqueness and a variety of other reasons.
Domain names and the web and email addresses that incorporate domain names are often memorable and sometimes committed to memory. They get written down in harder-to-change places like printed flyers, swag/stash and other organisations’ websites. Search engines take time to notice a change of web address as well. For these reasons and more, we urge you to plan for migration to a new domain, website and email addresses (as applicable to your Nightline) as soon as possible. Our support to you will focus on speedy migration as a priority.
Migrating to a new domain name
Most Nightlines need to migrate their website and email to a new domain name.
What kind of domain name to look for
A variety of Nightlines that already use their own domain name have opted for something like gallifreynightline.org.uk. We’d suggest choosing something similar, with your Nightline’s full name followed by a commonly recognised extension (like .org.uk, .org, .com or .co.uk). If your Nightline uses a widely known abbreviation (for instance, the University of Gallifrey might use frey.ac.uk) then you could shorten the domain name (something like freynightline.org.uk).
Our recommendation for purchasing domain names
Domain names are paid for on a recurring basis, and companies often bundle together the first few years at a fixed fee, and then charge on a rolling basis thereafter. Something to watch out for is that some companies offer domains at an initially low price for the first year, before the price skyrockets for the remainder of a 3- or 5- year contract.
We are currently preparing a list of recommended domain name registrars, and this page will be updated shortly.
About Web Hosting
We currently provide a Managed WordPress hosting service to a large number of Nightlines, where we provide hosted WordPress instances that we have looked after and managed on your behalf.
Timeline and key dates
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
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We will be holding a Q&A on domains and web hosting. Joining information is available on Slack for Nightlines and the Portal event calendar. |
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We hope to have all Nightlines migrated to alternative hosting providers. Our existing Managed WordPress service will be continued. |
Technical overview
Every website on the internet needs to be hosted on a server, or a cluster of servers, which send the website’s content (pages, images, etc.) whenever a visitor’s web browser requests it.
In 2025, web hosting is commercially available in many guises, ranging from ‘old-style’ shared hosting providers that merely offer a place to directly upload website code, to ‘managed hosting’ where the customer doesn’t have to worry about code so much, to ‘site builder’ services like Wix, Squarespace, Webflow and others that add another layer of convenience with a drag-and-drop user interface to put web pages together. All of these commercial providers run a series of servers, but this is visible to the customer (the website owner) to varying degrees. The Association’s WordPress site hosting service is an example of managed WordPress hosting with some additional site builder features through add-ons like the Divi theme or Elementor/SiteOrigin PageBuilder.
To use your own domain name with a web hosting service, the customer has to set up one or more domain name records with the right information to point at the web hosting provider’s servers. In many cases, the (1) web hosting provider also acts as the customer’s (2) domain name registrar and runs the (3) domain name servers for their customer, meaning that the hosting service can take care of the technical details without the customer’s involvement. (This is true of almost all sites the Nightline Association has been hosting.) This ‘all-in-one’ service is more convenient, although these three aspects of running a domain name and website can be arranged separately.
What we currently provide
The Association provides Managed WordPress website hosting to affiliated Nightlines through a contract we have with a UK cloud hosting company, Krystal Hosting. Most Nightlines use our Managed WordPress service, which can be identified by whether you see the Nightline Association’s logo when you sign in to modify your website.
Migrating to a new hosting provider
We anticipate that most Nightlines will want to continue using their existing WordPress sites, and so we have acquired some additional tooling to help with migrating your website to an alternative shared hosting or managed WordPress service provider.
We currently provide ElegantThemes’ Divi theme for free to Nightlines. If you currently use Divi, when you migrate to an alternative provider, you will need to pay for a Divi licence to continue using the theme ($89/year or $249/lifetime).
WordPress migration
- If you don’t already own a domain name, follow our steps for acquiring a new domain name for your website.
- Get in touch with us about migrating your website in #ask-it or IT@nightline.ac.uk.
- Let us know where you’re moving to - this could be one of our recommended providers, or alternatively anywhere else you may have found. Once you’ve been able to log in to your new WordPress installation, install the Duplicator plugin.
- We will provide you with a
.zipfile containing your website which you can simply upload to your new provider using the Duplicator plugin. This will restore all of your website’s files and settings.
Our recommendations for WordPress hosting
Before looking at other paid plans, it may be worth contacting your Students’ Union or university, who may be able to provide free or extremely discounted hosting plans.
Otherwise, we would recommend considering some of the suggestions below.
Krystal
A certified B-corp supporting a range of charitable and environmental initiatives, Krystal was our choice of provider for our Managed WordPress service because of its strong UK base and green initiatives. It provides a variety of different hosting options, including a free plan (or 50% price reductions) for registered charities. If you choose a paid plan, the Amethyst package for £70/year is likely to be more than sufficient for the needs of most Nightlines.
Mythic Beasts
Started in 2000 by a group of graduates from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Mythic Beast has continued to have strong ties with student groups and charities, and continue to have extremely competitive pricing plans. For most Nightlines, the Web 25 package (£2.50/month + VAT) is likely to cater to your needs.
Rebuilding your website with a sitebuilder alternative
Moving to a sitebuilder can make designing your website more simple, but it often comes with the drawbacks of more expensive payment plans and vendor lock-in (where it isn’t possible to move to a different provider if you’re unhappy or they raise their prices). If you want to move to a sitebuilder alternative, it’s worth considering the pros and cons of doing so.
- SquareSpace
- Wix
- WebFlow
NLA IT Q&A 2: Domains and Web Hosting (Slides)
The slides from the second NLA IT Q&A session focusing on domains and web hosting are available below.