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OSU.EDU URL Request Process

Policies for Other Domains (.net, .org, etc.)

Some quick facts

Shorter, more concise, and recognizable URLs are becoming more and more in demand across the entire Ohio State web community. Long, cumbersome URLs are visually unattractive, hard to remember, difficult to type in correctly, and reduce potential traffic, which in turn reduces overall visibility. To address this issue the Web Policy Committee opened up the domain space OSU.EDU for web site URLs.

When web usage at Ohio State was in its infancy, the naming structure of URLs was done in a matter-of-fact, "department_abbreviation.ohio-state.edu/specific_program" fashion. This document is an attempt to demonstrate some simple procedures for campus wide web server administrators to undertake that renaming process.

NAME.OSU.EDU URL Request Process

  1. Faculty, staff members or student organizations may select a name.osu.edu URL that is both descriptive and relevant to services provided by their web site using the following criteria:
    1. URL is not already taken
    2. URL does not conflict with Ohio State branding goals
    3. URL is not so general in nature as to confuse Ohio State web visitors
    4. URL is not used to merely "park" an address, so that others cannot use the name
  2. URLs will be reviewed using the following priority: Academic Area/Research Area, University Initiative, and finally Business Unit.
  3. Faculty, staff members or student organizations fill out the online request form: https://www.osu.edu/newmedia/checklist.php
  4. The request is posted to the Web Policy Online Forum: https://www.osu.edu/phorum/ (restricted access to Web Policy Committee Members only) within 24 hours of initial request
  5. E-mail notification is sent to Web Policy Listserv for general review within 24 hours of the initial request
  6. Objections to the requested URL are posted by Web Policy Committee members to the Web Policy Forum within ten working days after #3 and #4 are completed.
    1. If there are no objections the requester is asked to provide written sign off by department chair, director, dean or supervisor
    2. If there are no objections the URL is forwarded to Hostmaster for processing
  7. 6. Any member of the Web Policy Committee may raise objections to a requested URL. If a URL is rejected, the following steps are taken:
    1. A meeting is scheduled with the requester following objections to the requested URL
    2. A dynamic sub-team is formed to meet with the requester consisting of the Web Policy Committee Chair and committee members raising objections
    3. Alternate names are suggested for the requester to use
    4. If a compromise cannot be met during this meeting the requester is informed that a full vote by the Web Policy Committee will be necessary to move the process forward
    5. E-mail notification of URL dispute is forwarded to the requester's department chair, director, dean or supervisor
  8. Web Policy Committee members vote on disputed URL (either online or during a committee meeting)
  9. Applicants denied a specific URL by the Web Policy Committee may appeal the action to the CIO.
  10. Applicants denied a specific URL based on branding goals may appeal the action to University Relations.

Request OSU.edu Domain

`
https://www.osu.edu/newmedia/
www.osu.edu
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-48
31191
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:B3P3KLCA3HUXUYT7M2IOB2VUAIMPZUBU
<urn:uuid:1a10b5f3-f8aa-4b7c-a82b-ba453e98185c>
2015-12-01T11:06:14Z
140.254.112.210
sha1:FLGNSQZ5RKYFAEUQCV2DYQ6CIUAZQMDX
<urn:uuid:eca83e63-21fd-47ab-ac46-8d305fb004e2>
https://www.osu.edu/newmedia/
length
response
<urn:uuid:3b0b1a29-cb20-4119-89be-c05ad6bec55e>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-48
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for Nov 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf