Domain name guidelines
UF Health Guideline

NUMBER W3
PAGE 1 of 1
DATE
4.1.26

Guidelines statement

All UF Health websites must follow a standard domain naming convention.

Purpose

To achieve consistency in the “look and feel” of the website and for ease in navigation.

Procedures

1. URLs for patient-centric pages: Each site with a clearly identified patient-centric mission will have a URL that follows the directory structure and is short and concise. The URL will contain key words/phrases as early in the URL as possible.
   1. These sites will have domain names that start with ufhealth.org.
   2. The portion of the URL after ufhealth.org will be determined by the content type.
   3. Patient-centric content will be divided into several content types. Examples of potential content types include:
      1. Conditions/diseases/treatments/symptoms
      2. Providers
      3. Locations
      4. Service lines
      5. Clinical trials
      6. Research
   4. Only URLs that follow the structure outlined above are allowed for use in marketing patient services, unless approved by UF Health Communications.
2. Existing research and education-focused sites will maintain ufl.edu domain names, however new University-recognized institutes may use *.UFHealth.org domains
   1. In keeping with UF IT domain name policies, third-level domains are acceptable for colleges within the Health Science Center. Example: http://college.ufl.edu
   2. Fourth level domains will be used for departments within the HSC. This will be the last level at which URLs are dictated by guidelines. Example: http://department.college.ufl.edu
   3. Only URLs that follow the structure outlined above are allowed for use in marketing research and education units, unless approved by UF Health Communications.
3. Other criteria for URLs:
   1. New URLs the web services team creates will not contain www.
   2. Existing URLs with www. Should redirect to http://website
   3. Colleges should use one format for domain name (eg: con.ufl.edu or nursing.ufl.edu). If both formats exist, one should be the actual website, the other should redirect to the actual site.
   4. Must be in all lower case
   5. May not include spaces or special characters
   6. May not include file extensions
   7. May not include a port number
   8. Must be professionally appropriate terminology
   9. Must contain relevant keywords.
   10. Vanity URLs may be granted in some cases. For guidelines regarding vanity URLs, see the Appeals Process Guidelines and the Work Request Process documents.
   11. For all non-.edu domains for sites officially affiliated with UF Health, approval by the UF Health Communications office is required before the domains can be used on external websites.
4. For an appeals process related to URLs, see the guidelines on the appeals process.

References

UF IT Domain Name Policy