When a city moves to .gov, the old address has to keep working

A city switches its address

San Rafael, California launched its redesigned website at sanrafael.gov on Thursday, October 22, 2026. The next day, the city started moving staff email too. General city addresses are changing from @cityofsanrafael.org to @sanrafael.gov, and police department email is moving from @srpd.org to @sanrafaelpolice.gov, according to the San Rafael Record.

The move helps the city comply with Assembly Bill 1637, a 2023 California law that requires cities and counties to use .gov or .ca.gov domains for their public websites and employee email by January 1, 2029. Every California city and county that hasn't switched yet faces the same deadline.

San Rafael's new site is built around tasks rather than departments, with sections like "Permits and construction" and "Making a payment." The city says more than half its visitors are on phones. It folded the library's website in, and the police site moves over later this fall. "We built the site around the services and information that residents come for most," said Sean Mooney, the city's director of digital service and open government.

That's the visible part. For any agency planning the same move, the harder part is the old address.

What breaks when the domain changes

Residents won't remember the day you launched. They'll remember the permit link on a flyer that went nowhere.

These are the things that tend to keep pointing at an old domain long after launch day. None of this is a claim about San Rafael's setup. It's the list we'd work through for any agency.

Bookmarks and search results. Residents have years of saved links to the old site, and search engines have them indexed. Every important old page needs a permanent redirect to its new home, not just a redirect to the new homepage. A resident looking for a parking permit form who lands on the front page has to start over.

Printed and posted links. Utility bills, signs at the transfer station, permit applications, QR codes on posters, business cards. These outlive any website. If an old URL is printed somewhere, it needs to keep resolving.

PDFs and documents. Agendas, forms and reports often contain hard-coded links to other city pages. They're easy to forget because nobody edits them after publishing.

Email to old addresses. People will keep emailing @oldcity.org addresses for years, from residents to state agencies. Forwarding has to stay on, with a gentle auto-reply that gives the new address. Turning it off too early means missed public records requests and complaints that never arrive.

Systems that send on the city's behalf. Utility billing, permit portals, recreation sign-ups, alert systems, agenda software. Many are run by vendors and send email that says it's from the city. Each one has to be updated to the new domain, and the new domain's email authentication settings have to allow it. Otherwise official notices land in spam, or look like phishing.

Third-party listings. Map listings, state directories, social profiles, grant portals, the chamber of commerce site. They all carry a website link and often an email address.

The order that keeps things calm

Order matters more than speed.

Inventory first. Before launch, list every old page that gets real traffic, every email address that appears in public, and every system that sends from the city's domain. Ask each department. They know which links are on their forms.

Set up the new domain's email properly. Before staff start sending from the new address, set the authentication records that tell other mail servers which systems are allowed to send as the city. Add each vendor system to that list as it moves.

Launch with redirects ready. Redirects should go live with the new site, page by page. Test the most common ones on a phone, since that's where most residents are.

Move email in stages. Switch staff addresses, keep forwarding on, and turn on auto-replies. Update signatures, letterhead and voicemail greetings at the same time.

Move vendor systems one by one. Each billing, permit or notification system gets its own cutover, with a test message sent to a real outside inbox.

Then move the next piece. San Rafael is bringing its police site over later this fall. A staged approach like that keeps each change small enough to check properly.

Keep the old domain registered, for years

Here's the step agencies most often regret skipping. Don't let the old domain expire.

Once a domain lapses, anyone can register it. A stranger who owns your old city address can receive email meant for your staff and put up a page that looks official. Residents and businesses who saved the old address years ago have no way of knowing it changed hands.

Keep paying for the old domain, keep the redirects and forwarding running, and set a calendar reminder for every renewal. Make sure the account that holds it is controlled by the agency, not a former employee or a vendor. We wrote about that problem in who holds the domain.

The new .gov domain needs the same care. According to get.gov, .gov domains are registered for one year at a time, and renewal asks you to verify your contact information. Expired .gov domains that don't have DNS name servers are deleted immediately. Keep the contacts current and the renewal on someone's calendar.

After launch: watch what residents actually do

San Rafael says it plans to run usability testing through the year, which is the right instinct. A launch is a starting point.

For the first few months, watch three things. Look at the pages residents are searching for and not finding, often visible in the site's own search logs. Look at the old URLs still getting traffic, which tells you where redirects are missing or which printed materials are still out there. And look at what's arriving at the old email addresses, which tells you who hasn't heard about the change.

Then fix in small batches. A new redirect here, a reprinted form there, a note to a state agency that keeps writing to the old address.

Planning your own move

If your city or county has until 2029, it's tempting to wait. But a domain move done calmly over a year is far easier than one done in a rush in late 2028, when every vendor is busy with the same work.

Our government and public sector team helps agencies plan .gov moves, from the inventory and redirects to email cutover, vendor coordination and a site built around what residents need. Talk to us.

Related work: Sutton Place.