Buying a domain

Your site starts at a free temporary address, yourclub.openside.club. Before you launch, you’ll want an address of your own, such as yourclub.com.

Choosing one

• Short and easy to say. People will hear it at the clubhouse more often than they’ll click it.
• The ending. Use your country’s (.jp, .co.uk, .com.au) if your club is local, or .com, .club or .rugby if you’d rather.
• Check social media. It helps if the same name is free on Instagram and Facebook.

Registering it

Any domain registrar works. The common ones are Cloudflare, Namecheap and GoDaddy. In Japan, お名前.com, Xserverドメイン and ムームードメイン are popular. A domain usually costs between £10 and £40 a year, paid to the registrar, not to us.

Register the domain to the club, using an email address the committee shares, not one person’s. Committees change, and a domain registered to someone who has left the club is hard to get back.

Already have one?

If your club already has a domain, perhaps with an old website on it, you can use it. The next step moves it to your new site. The old site goes offline when you do, so launch when the new one is ready.