If you’re a SiteHost customer with .au domains, you can expect an email from Public Domain Registry (not from us) about an upcoming registry name change. You need to know that, yes, the email is legit, and that the change will have no practical effect on you.
The email in question will come from compliance@publicdomainregistry.com with the subject line “Change in Registrar name for your .AU Domain”.
Nothing will change in terms of domain management, billing, or DNS. Everything will keep working just like it always has. If that’s all you wanted to check, you can close this tab and get on with your day. Or if you want a bit more background, read on.
Registrars and resellers
When you acquire a .au domain through us, we work through a registrar to secure your rights to the domain. Registrars meet a range of technical and security standards that are set by auDA, the organisation that “develops and administers the rules for domain names in the .au country code”. There are only a small number of registrars - most companies that offer domains, including us, operate as resellers.
So, you find a reseller to supply domain names and the tools to manage them. The reseller works through a registrar to secure your rights to domain names. The registrar keeps everything in line with auDA’s overall governance of .au.
In our case we’ve worked with a registrar called Public Domain Registry. The change that’s about to happen concerns Public Domain Registry. Their registrar duties are going to be handed over to Web Address Registration Pty Ltd - another registrar that meets all of auDA’s requirements.
All of this is recorded in a WHOIS record for every domain. You can find WHOIS records for .au domains, including the registrars and sellers (known as registrants) at whois.auda.org.au.
WHOIS updates
Because your domain’s registrar is changing, your domain’s WHOIS record is going to be updated. Whenever a WHOIS record is updated in this way, auDA has a requirement that notification gets sent to that domain’s contacts, i.e. you.
So if you received an email from compliance@publicdomainregistry.com with the subject line “Change in Registrar name for your .AU Domain”, now you know why.
And now, the rest of your day
In short, there’s nothing for you to worry about. There’s a strong chance you won’t notice anything. But if you have any questions at all about domain management (or anything else), we’re always here.