URL principles

Sydney URLs follow the principles listed below. These principles are in order of importance. Meaning is more important than Context. Shortness should not override Meaning, Context or Consistency.

New top level URLs, including convenience URLs (ie first level folders occurring after the domain name, or subdomains) will be approved by DPM.

1. Meaningful

For example: calculating_costs.shtml

• meaningful to the target audience (users, also search engines)
• use keywords which the target audience will understand
• not ambiguous (URLs using generic words that could apply to different areas within the University will not be approved; see also convenience URLs)
• avoid technical vocabulary unless that is appropriate for the audience
• avoid acronyms unless they are appropriate for their audience, the acronym has a strong existing presence in the marketplace, or use of the acronym is the only way to produce a useful URL; acronyms of less than three letters should be avoided

2. Contextual

For example: /domestic_undergraduate/costs_scholarships/

• convey the location of the website and/or page to the user and provide context for the information on the page
• this is not necessarily the same as organisational structure

3. Consistent

For example: /future_students/ not /fstudent/

• consistent in nomenclature (within your site and with the rest of the University's website)
• follow the published style guidelines (sentence case, remove stop-words, provide an index page for all folders, use hyphen/underscore consistently within a site)

4. Short

For example: /research not /research_innovation

• as short as practical, avoiding redundancy
• discretion may have to be exercised with long names
• acronyms may have to be used for very long URLs (eg for research centres)

Convenience URLs

Convenience URLs are aliases to provide a shorthand address to a website or page.

For example: /dpm goes to /digital_print_media

• convenience or promotional URLs may be used which redirect users to the appropriate website
• convenience URLs for faculty and school websites require the approval of the faculty dean, but will in almost all instances be required to include the faculty name
• convenience URLs that could refer to different University entities will lead to a custom landing page with links to the different entities; DPM will manage these custom landing pages