Web Domains

Internal Domains

All official university websites must be hosted on the illinois.edu domain. This pertains to units
whose projects or activities are funded by the university, take place in university facilities or use
university resources.

For branding and marketing purposes, a unit may use a vanity URL, so long as that URL is
forwarded to the unit site on the illinois.edu domain. A unit may not forward its illinois.edu
address to an outside domain, e.g., labname.com.

External Domains, Partners and Sponsors

If you are collaborating with other universities or entities or communicating about research and
work not affiliated with the University of Illinois, you may use or create a website outside of the
illinois.edu domain.

When creating a website in collaboration with an outside partner or sponsor, it’s ideal to have it
on the illinois.edu domain, especially when a university unit is the lead in the collaboration.

Sites hosted on the illinois.edu domain must use the university’s standard web header and
footer. If these are not representative of the partnership or sponsorship, the site should be
hosted on an external domain.

Sites created outside the illinois.edu domain in sponsorship or collaboration with entities outside
the university may feature the university’s wordmark or logo to show affiliation.

Before using the university’s wordmarks or web headers and footers for an outside domain,
consult with Strategic Communications and Marketing.

URL Masking

If you work with an outside vendor in a software-as-a-service relationship, use URL
masking. With URL masking or cloaked URL forwarding, a website can appear to be on the illinois.edu domain even when housed on an outside domain. This helps further our brand
outside of the illinois.edu domain.

For URL masking, the outside domain vendor must be able to support the website’s hostname,
and our domain name system servers must have at least one entry communicating the
relationship between the illinois.edu hostname and the vendor’s systems.

Talk with your unit’s IT staff for help with this process.

Web Hosting Services

Not sure where to start for your web hosting? Tech Services put together a finder tool to identify the web hosting services that best meet your needs.