Digital

Contact Us Digital & Web
Dunlop Oriel House
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin 2
Ireland

View the contact page for more contact and location information

digital@tcd.ie

8. Website URL Policy

This URL policy relates to the following web categories on the Trinity domain -  tcd.ie

  • Websites on tcd.ie - websites for Faculties, Schools, Research Institutes, Services etc.
  • Web applications – mydigitalid.tcd.ie (see appendix A)
  • Enterprise applications - fis.tcd.ie, HR Core (see appendix B)

All Trinity URLs, including top level URLs, should follow the format www.tcd.ie/name.

The following areas are entitled to a top level URL:

  • All Faculties, Schools and Disciplines are entitled to a top level URL in the form of www.tcd.ie/name.
  • All Services and Administrative areas are entitled to a top level URL in the form of www.tcd.ie/name.
  • All courses, including multi-disciplinary and inter-institutional courses, will be hosted under www.tcd.ie/courses in the form www.tcd.ie/courses/course-name.
  • All recognised Trinity Research Institutes and Trinity Research Centres (as listed at www.tcd.ie/structure/research) are entitled to top level URLs.  Requests for top level research URLs that are not listed as part of www.tcd.ie/structure/research will be referred directly to the Dean of Research for approval and if granted will take the form of www.tcd.ie/name.

    Research groupings, including inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional research group requests will be hosted under www.tcd.ie/research in the form www.tcd.ie/research/name-research-group or hosted under the relevant Faculty/School.

Applying for a URL

In the first instance, all requests for URLs and in particular for the creation of top level URLs should be directed to the IT Services desk (itservicedesk@tcd.ie).   The default convention is tcd.ie/name.  All URLs should contain only lowercase characters and hyphens can be used to separate words e.g. www.tcd.ie/teaching-learning.

Exemptions from the policy may be applied for, on a case by case basis if there is a technical reason, as to why a specific website, enterprise and/or web application needs to retain the URL in the form of name.tcd.ie.  Exemptions will typically be for enterprise or web applications.

Exceptions will be evaluated and either approved or rejected by the Director of IT Services (or his / her nominee) following consultation, as appropriate, with the Digital and Web unit, the Dean of Research, the Identity Management Committee, and other parties as deemed necessary. 

Appendix A

Web applications are software programs with a web based user interface that allow users to remotely use or access the programs or services they connect to.

Examples in College would be:

  • The Trinity ID application for students at mydigitalid.tcd.ie
  • The access statistics reports for College web sites at weblogs.tcd.ie

While typically on a smaller scale than enterprise applications, there may be circumstances that require individual domain names allocated to them.  Examples of these would be:

  • Bespoke applications providing a user interface to a College service that utilizes hardware or software that cannot technically be integrated into the existing www.tcd.ie structure.
  • Applications or services contracted to third parties where there are technical or security impediments to integrating into the existing www.tcd.ie structure.
  • Authenticated services where the security requirements for user logons are technically bound to a Secure Certificate specific to an individual domain name.
  • Services or applications available solely to the internal College network.

Appendix B

Enterprise applications are large software systems which provide a comprehensive set of tools to meet a particular set of business needs.  Typically these systems are accessed by users online via a web portal which offers a single point of entry for all the services provided by the enterprise application.

Examples in College would be:

  • The HR CORE portal which offers staff access to their personal and financial information.
  • The FIS portal for financial information services
  • The my.tcd.ie portal which offers staff and students access to a range of IT related services.

Enterprise and web portals in College share characteristics that distinguish them from normal websites and which impact on their implementation:

  • They are complex systems with specific technical requirements and require environments tailored to their needs.
  • They may run on proprietary hardware/software platforms.
  • They may have specific security requirements (e.g. neither the HR or FIS portals are available externally and for security reasons it would not desirable to link those systems to other services designed to be publicly available).
  • Their implementation and management is contracted by the owning department/functional area to third party vendors.

These characteristics mean that implementing enterprise applications requires allocating technical resources dedicated solely to that service, including a domain name pointing directly at the web portal that is the access point for the application/service.