Transforming UB’s digital communications.
UB guidelines and policies for naming websites.
Your page's 'name' is quite different from its 'title.'
A page's name is the filename that is used by the UBCMS, and the Web in general, to identify where your page is located, and forms a key part of the URL. (A page's 'title' is the descriptive label displayed in the browser, or search results.)
Best practices for website names recommend:
The application team will determine your final web address (URL) based on the framework below.
Subdirectories (buffalo.edu/name) are the default location for university-wide subjects, initiatives, programs, campaigns, and content that contribute to the primary buffalo.edu web experience. This structure reinforces their place within the university's overall information architecture and appropriately signals an institution-level destination rather than one belonging to a standalone organizational entity.
Example: Reseach Centers, Enterprise, Service and Initiative Websites
The recommended naming convention for research centers, enterprise, service, and intiative websites is buffalo.edu/researchcenter, buffalo.edu/service, or buffalo.edu/initiative.
Subdomains (name.buffalo.edu) are reserved for web properties representing major organizational entities, enduring institutional functions, or distinct digital applications, platforms and services that warrant a distinct web presence within the broader buffalo.edu ecosystem.
Meeting any one criterion above does not automatically warrant creation of a subdomain. The property should demonstrate sufficient organizational, functional, technical, experiential or governance distinction to justify operating as a serparate web property.
In determining whether a subdomain is appropriate, consideration will be given to the property's institutional role, organizational or functional identity, purpose, functionality, technology, governance and user experience. The breadth of a topic or the aggregation of content from multiple university units does not, by itself, warrant a subdomain.
Example: Decanal Websites
Because decanal websites represent major academic entities with distinct organizational identities, governance, audiences and comprehensive web presences within UB, the recommended naming convention for these sites is school.buffalo.edu, where school is a descriptive name created for the benefit of visitors and not necessarily the entity name.
In most cases, the name of divisions, departments, services or programs within a decanal unit is school.buffalo.edu/division. Further distinctions could be made, such as school.buffalo.edu/division/program.