Short URLs

• Anatomy of a URL
• CNAMEs and webaliases
• Limitations

Most people follow links, or find pages in search engines. And, once found, they bookmark the URL. For these people, it doesn't matter at all what the URL is. However, if you plan on advertising your URL in printed media, it's easier to advertise a short URL. If this is the case for you, read on.

Each URL ultimately corresponds to a certain file on a certain server. The logical relationship between URLs is given by links on one or more pages. This is really independent from the physical relationship between files on a server, usually given by a hierarchical directory structure. Use the directory structure to help the site maintainer deal with files; use the link structure to help your users navigate your webfiles. Understand the difference.

A simple URL (missing a few optional parts) has the form:

 protocol://machine/path/file 

This tells the browser to contact the server, present the string path/file, and expect the server to figure out which physical file to return. Two ways to shorten the URL are:

• Use a default filename
• Use a new server name to refer to the old server+path (using a CNAME or a webalias)

The file part of the URL is actually optional. If it is missing, the server will check for any files named

• index.html
• index.shtml
• index.htm
• index.asis

For example, http://www.uic.edu/classes really gets you http://www.uic.edu/classes/index.shtml.

If filename defaults aren't good enough, your choice is a webalias or a CNAME.

• A webalias is a URL like http://my.pages.uic.edu that redirects to your real website located at:
  http://www.uic.edu/path/to/your/directory/.
• A CNAME is a secondary name that resolves to an existing server: tigger.uic.edu for tigger.cc.uic.edu.

This can be done, but is a little complicated and there are a number of restrictions:

• 3-level names, such as www.uic.edu and accc.uic.edu are reserved campus-wide resources. For example, if there were a "Klingon Studies Department" in the "College of Alien Cultures", a name like klingon.uic.edu is fine. In this hypothetical example, if the "Klingon Linguistics Office" within Klingon Studies would want a domain name, they would get a 4-level name, such as linguistics.klingon.uic.edu rather than the 3-level klingonlinguistics.uic.edu.
• 4-level names (or above), such as itl.accc.uic.edu can be created within an existing 3-level departmental zone, accc.uic.edu.
• If your organization doesn't really fit in your (or a) department, we already made a zone for you: pages.uic.edu. So you are welcome to use myorganization.pages.uic.edu if you don't fit anywhere else.

To request a CNAME or a webalias, send email to: wwwtech@uic.edu. Be sure to include the following information, along with any questions you might have:

• UIC netid
• proposed name
• existing URL or server name

Please note that redirection using the CNAME will not work with SSL, that is, with https:// URLs. If you need encryption or Bluestem for security, you won't be able to construct URLs of the form http://CNAME/....

This is not a major deal, becuase the URLs of the form https://www.uic.edu/... will still work for your site. You just have to be careful to use www.uic.edu for URLs that point back to your site, even if you advertise your main page at http://CNAME/.