URL and Domain Name Guidelines

Web Addresses in the U of L Web Presence

This document is an overview of how to achieve two objectives:

• To handle web domains for business units, departments, student organizations, other academic and administrative organizations, special projects, and research projects in a manner that maximizes their usability and accessibility.

• To simplify the louisville.edu web architecture, flattening the web hierarchy by placing units and departments at the top level of the web site

Problem

The current web site structure is difficult to navigate and is not intuitive for internal or external users. The vast number of units and departments are buried under a branching structure that is difficult to maneuver.

In addition, when units shift from one managerial department to another, moving web content to reflect that organizational shift is tedious and confusing for users accustomed to finding data in a particular location.

Finally, many unit and department Web addresses are too long, confusing and difficult to use in marketing publications and other communications with internal and external audiences.

One of the most received complaints/requests to IT and Communications & Marketing revolves around the following question: "How do I get a better/easier URL/link to use for my site?" We must improve this situation to better reflect the expectations of our Web users to better serve our constituent students, faculty, staff and public.

Background

The current Web site organization and addresses stemmed from a 9-year old methodology that called for organizing our Web site to reflect U of L’s organizational hierarchy. Web content - and the resulting Web address - was placed within the college/school/division/unit's organizational structure.

In many cases acronyms for departments and organizations were used when naming and placing Web content into U of L’s Web structure. While the resulting Web addresses were shorter, they were not optimized for usability, accessibility, or search engine access. Unless the user has a reason to know a particular acronym, a search of the entire Louisville.edu domain is often necessary.

Proposed Solution

Simplify the louisville.edu architecture
Our proposal is to flatten the web hierarchy, placing units,departments at the top level of the web site, creating a wider, more navigationally simple web structure. Each college or business unit will manage its own content autonomously within a root-level directory.

Create more usable addresses for U of L entities

For academic and administrative entities

Academic and administrative entities covered by this guideline would include academic schools and colleges, academic departments and programs, administrative divisions and subunits, and governing bodies or committees.

Each academic and administrative entity would receive one (1) U of L Web address that they can then communicate to all audiences. The addresses will be chosen by each entity with guidance from Communications and Marketing with the goal of creating simple, descriptive addresses that best reflect the role or function of the particular unit within the university and maximizes searchability for U of L’s key audiences.

For a number of reasons (including cognitive Section 508 issues, readability, search engine concerns), addresses will not be acronyms but fully recognized words. Exceptions are those very few acronyms that are nearly universally recognized, found in a dictionary, and likely to be entered into search engines or recognized by the average screen reader. Additionally, acronyms may be used for names with more than 20 characters. Examples: IT, HR, SGA

The addresses will be chosen using the following template:
    louisville.edu/[entity]

Examples:

Academic schools, colleges, departments, and programs:

• College of Business: louisville.edu/business

• Accounting program in College of Business: louisville.edu/accounting

Administrative divisions and subunits:

• Business Affairs: louisville.edu/businessaffairs

• Purchasing department within Business Affairs: louisville.edu/purchasing

Governing bodies or committees:

• Faculty Senate: louisville.edu/facultysenate

• Student Government Association: louisville.edu/studentgovernment

University-wide Services:

University-wide services, such as NetMail, GroupWise, ULink and Help Desk, will receive one (1) U of L domain name using the following template:
    louisville.edu/[service]

Examples:

NetMail: louisville.edu/netmail
GroupWise: louisville.edu/groupwise
Help Desk: louisville.edu/helpdesk

For other U of L entities:

U of L entities covered by this guideline include research studies, grant-funded projects, organizations, centers and institutes, clinical trials, student organizations, and other types of non-academic or administrative U of L entities.

The addresses for other U of L entities must be housed either under the administrative unit, college or school, or academic department that sponsors that group, sponsor, or study, or under a designated organizational URL. For example, this approach will keep Business school projects associated with the business school, art department projects with the art department, and the Medical and Kent School's many trials and studies attached to those institutions.

Examples:

Student organization:

Golden Key National Honor Society: louisville.edu/rso/goldenkey/

Clinical Trial:

louisville.edu/pediatrics/clinicaltrialsunit/

NOTE: The address using the louisville.edu/[entity] template may not refer to the actual URL of the site; entering the louisville.edu/[entity] address will redirect the end user to the actual URL of the site they wish to visit.

Rationale for this guideline:

Addresses using the louisville.edu/[entity] scheme have been shown to be more usable to Web site visitors and more accessible to people with disabilities when compared to addresses using the [entity].louisville.edu scheme. For example, using the louisville.edu/[entity] scheme could eventually lend itself to an alternative way of navigation and searching the U of L Web site. Many other large organizations, such as Microsoft and Macromedia, have used the organization.com/shortcut scheme to make the URLs of their pages human readable and guessable. For example, microsoft.com/visio will redirect users to the actual address of Microsoft’s home page for the Visio product. Other Microsoft products, such as Word and Excel, will work in the same way.

Web address “grandfather clause”:

Web addresses acquired before January 2007 that fall outside of these guidelines will be maintained for a period of 1 year. After 1 year, new addresses will be reserved and each entity will use an address that falls within the guidelines. In addition, permanent redirects for old addresses will be implemented so that bookmarks, external links, and other references to the old domain names will still function correctly.

Exceptions:

Exceptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis by Communications and Marketing.

Conflicts:

Communications and Marketing will resolve all address conflicts on a case-by-case basis, resulting in a final notification of all involved parties.

Requesting U of L Web addresses:

Please see http://ouisville.edu/web/tools/site-requests/ to register for an address and obtain supporting documentation.