UW Information Technology can provide both subdomains of the University of Washington domain spaces, as well as help purchasing and setting up non-UW domains.
Campus Subdomain
Campus subdomains act as an extension of the parent University of Washington domains, and are commonly used to logically separate a website, server, or service into distinct sections. Campus subdomains can use either the uw.edu or the washington.edu parent domain. Since many UW services, such as UW’s email service, use uw.edu as the parent domain, we encourage new subdomains to be under the uw.edu parent domain as well. If needed, you can request to set a link from the washington.edu domain as well.
UW subdomains do not come with associated costs, however please ensure that any new subdomain adds value or have a specific purpose that cannot be achieved by using an existing subdomain. If your department does not already have a subdomain or if you determine that an existing subdomain does not fit your needs, a new one may be requested by submitting information to the form below.
If you are not already familiar with the UW-IT DNS and Domain policy, please review the general guidelines specifically regarding Campus Subdomains. Additionally if this subdomain will be used to create a new Windows domain (Active Directory domain), then you should first review information about setting up a Windows domain at the UW.
Non-UW Domains
In addition to campus uw.edu and washington.edu domains, UW-IT can provide support for approved non-UW domain names, such as kexp.org. Domains not under washington.edu or uw.edu typically require a registration fee that might vary in price depending on the Top-Level Domain (TLD) or specific registrar. UW-IT primarily uses Network Solutions as our registrar for non-UW domains.
The following policies and procedures apply to non-UW domain registration:
- UW Information Technology will register a non-UW domain with an external registrar.
- UW Information Technology is responsible for the setup and management of the account with the name registrar.
- The requesting organization or department must provide a billing contact and valid financial information (Workday worktags).
- UW Information Technology will coordinate purchase of the domain, but the initial registration payment and renewals are charged to your organization, based on the financial information you provided.
- The requesting organization or department should confirm that the desired domain is available for registration and not currently registered to another party. You can check the registration status of a domain at www.whois.net, or by using whois on a command line terminal If the query returns “No match for “ or the website indicates the domain is available, then the domain is probably available for registration.
- Use of University of Washington DNS servers to provide name service for personal or commercial domains is strictly prohibited. Indeed, use of any UW resources, including the network, for any personal or commercial use is strictly prohibited.
If a domain name is unowned and not knowingly offensive, we will typically allow any name that a department or grant project is willing to pay for. Please carefully consider the number of years you wish to purchase. While there may be some cost savings associated with longer purchases, there also is no way to get a refund for a domain name which you decide not to use or to stop using.
Other information
Associating a UW NetID with a DNS hostname will allow you to take advantage of many infrastructure services (Certificate Services, Authentication Services, UW Groups, etc.).
Subdomain refers to the (typically) departmental subdomain under which you belong. There is no general campus subdomain. If you do not know your departmental subdomain, please give the name of your department.
Questions can be sent to help@uw.edu or 206-221-5000.