URL Shortcuts

short urls for publications

URLs reflect the directory structure of a website. As a result they can be very long and not suitable for publication or memorization.

Ohio.gov shortcuts are restricted to those that would redirect an Ohio.gov visitor to the Agency's home page. Agency websites can have as many shortcuts as are manageable. http://oit.ohio.gov/tsr is an example of an agency shortcut. It simply redirects the visitor to the appropriate page in the DAS/OIT website structure.

How To

• Create a folder with the shortcut name
• Set up a default.asp page in the folder
• FTP the folder to the root level of the Agency test site
• Browse the shortcut url in [agency].test.ohio.gov
• FTP the folder to the _LaunchPoint agency folder
• Browse the shortcut url in [agency].ohio.gov

Default.asp

The section of code in between <% and %> is what actually does the redirect. The remaining two areas, Meta Tab and HTML, are there as a backup. The destination url should appear 4 times.

Best Practices

If you prefer to have a home page named something other than index or default it is a good idea to have the default.asp page set up in your root directory to deliver visitors to your home page if they only enter the domain.

It is also a good idea to have a default.asp page in every directory. Frequently when a visitor gets a 404 message they work their way back through the url one directory at a time to see if there is a default page for the directory. Having a default.asp page redirecting a visitor to an appropriate page provides for a better user experience.

Additionally, it is a best practice to have each application in its own directory. If the application directory also has a default.asp file in it then links on the website to the application and within the application to the application home page can be made just to the directory name. This shortens the path and gives the site administrator greater control. If maintenance is needed on the site then the url in the default.asp page can be updated to deliver the visitor to a maintenance page rather than the application home page.

Sequence Counts

IIS is set up with a series of file names that can function as the default pages for any given directory. When a visitor just enters the domain name, with or without a folder name, IIS checks for these file names in order before presenting a 404. They usually exist in this order:

default.htm
default.asp
index.htm
default.aspx
index.asp
index.html
index.stm

Over time some hosted sites have been modified to have a page with a different name set up as the default. Unfortunately there isn't a quick simple way to determine the default page for each of the domains and accompanying sub directories. If you get unexpected behaviors let us know what directory is in question and we can check the settings for you.