Corporate Web Standards

Web Address (Domain name and URL)

  • Web page names must be meaningful to the visitor
  • Web page names must:
    • be short
    • be in all lower case
    • contain no punctuation
    • contain no spaces
    • use hyphens, not underscores between words
    • remain static to prevent broken links occurring
  • Web pages that appear in print must not be the format www3.hants.gov.uk. Please contact the Corporate Web Team for information on setting up a redirect.
  • Where Hampshire County Council is the majority funder sites must be part of the hants.gov.uk domain

All Hampshire County Council departments, business units and collaborative projects where Hampshire County Council is the majority funder must be part of the hants.gov.uk domain and will be allocated a URL e.g. www.hants.gov.uk/education/

For new collections of pages, please contact the Web Services Team to discuss the appropriate URL.

Naming web pages

URLs (web addresses) must remain stable so they remain reliable to link to, feature well in search engines and are memorable to the user. Changing the names of established web pages is discouraged.

When naming web pages you must use lower case with no punctuation or spaces (hyphens are acceptable but try to avoid over use). Underscores should not be used as this can cause confusion when links are underlined (on web pages, in emails and other electronic documents). The name must be meaningful, so use real names rather than abbreviations or code. It should also be unambiguous when spoken and easy to type. This will make your web page address (URL) more memorable and easier to direct people to.

Following these guidelines ensures that the URL (web address) format is consistent.


Influences on this standard

UK Government Guidelines

Central Office Information guidelines - managing URLs

"Use persistent and meaningful URLs.....URLs should be meaningful so that they are easily understood by a user. Meaningful or 'human-readable' URLs are good practice for a number of reasons, including usability, security, and search engine optimisation".