Updated August 2025

Justification

The Marketing and Agricultural Communications Web Services Section and Martin-Gatton CAFE IT team are routinely asked to keep old website URLs in use in the form of automatically redirecting these old addresses to a new address that has been adopted. This also can include creating website aliases and multiple DNS names for a host. We recognize the importance of having a website address that is both easy to remember and meets any standard naming convention we have in place. However, maintaining old and new site URLs for each website as a long-term solution can create several problems for those searching for current and relevant information on our websites.

• When these redirects are kept in place, Google search and other search indexes are never updated with the new, correct site address.
• The ability to maintain these workarounds becomes more difficult as time passes and our hosting environment undergoes upgrades and growth.
• This creates a high likelihood of errors occurring due to sometimes redirecting for more than one “hop.”

Standards

Below are the guidelines that must be met before agreeing to put a redirect in place for an existing Martin-Gatton CAFE site.

• Redirects from previous website URLs to new URLs are put in place only when absolutely necessary, such as when an old URL is used in printed materials. Printed materials refer to building signage or a material printed at a printer in a quantity of 500 or more. We will work with each entity to correct these items as soon as possible and then will continue the phase out process of the old address.
• The standard timeframe for a redirect is 3 months. Redirects are not renewable or extendable. This will be set to less than 3 months when possible.
• If no other timeframe has been set or we no longer have contact information for a site maintainer, the redirect will expire within 6 months of the new site, alias or DNS becoming “live.”
• One-for-one redirects cannot always be achieved effectively. In these cases, a redirect for the entire site will be put in place at the root or main level of the site.
• The standard in place for naming new sites within the Martin-Gatton CAFE is based on the *.ca.uky.edu URL structure for content management sites (Drupal) and application-specific sites (such as NEP, Patim, etc.).
• The standard in place for naming new staging and development sites within the Martin-Gatton CAFE is based on the *.stg.uky.ag structure.

External Domain Name Registrations and Hosting (those not managed by Marketing and Agricultural Communications):

• We do not purchase domain name registrations for users. We recommend using the adopted naming standard of *.ca.uky.edu, which means the site will be hosted by us and the domain name and DNS address is maintained and provided by Marketing and Agricultural Communications, UKITS and their DNS servers.
• Though it is not recommended, if a Martin-Gatton CAFE user, department, section or entity has purchased a domain name and wants that name redirected to an existing Martin-Gatton CAFE website that we host, we will provide them with the information needed to point their external domain name to their Martin-Gatton CAFE hosted site. However, the purchaser of the domain name will be responsible for updating this information via their domain name registrant. We request that such actions be communicated to the Web Services Section and Systems Group before purchase to ensure such redirects can be achieved. These requests will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
• We require up-to-date contact information for the domain registrant and site maintainer as well as notification when these domain names and redirects are no longer needed or are no longer in use.
• We will not place a redirect from a new site to an old existing site page that is not being maintained and updated.
• We will maintain a current list of all site redirects, aliases and domain names specific to website hosting that we maintain and include information pertaining to the date requested, removal date and contact information.
• All redirects can be revoked or removed at any time per the Martin-Gatton CAFE Web Services Section, Marketing and Agricultural Communications Director or the Dean of Martin-Gatton CAFE.