SUNScholar/Guidelines/Step 2/PURL

BACK TO STEP 2

Persistent URL (PURL)

The marketing friendly, (vanity url), persistent URL is vital for electronic citation persistence on the web in the long term and for repository marketing/branding.

TRY TO ENSURE THAT THE NAME WILL NEVER CHANGE

• Do not use www in the URL, see: http://no-www.org
• Decide on a marketing friendly name for the repository.
• This name should be short and simple to remember, easy to type into documentation and good for marketing/branding.
• Ensure that the URL is clean with no forward slash redirects or port numbers. See links below.

1. Good Web URL Tips
2. Listen on port 80 and 443
3. Configure the default UI

Further Reading

A Brief History of the Domain Name
Domain Names Explained
Website Metrics
Open Citation Systems

Good Examples

• http://scholar.sun.ac.za
• http://digital.lib.sun.ac.za
• http://open.uct.ac.za

Bad Examples

• http://uctscholar.uct.ac.za - Double use of UCT is very confusing for marketing.
• http://researchspace.csir.co.za/dspace - Uses a forward slash URL something and very long hostname (researchspace) which is bad for advocacy.
• http://digitalknowledge.cput.ac.za/xmlui - Uses a forward slash URL something and very long hostname (digitalknowledge) which is bad for advocacy.

Networking Help

http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php/Networking