The Output URI

Advisory

The information on this page is only applicable if you're editing the University webpages using T4. It presumes that you have already completed the beginners and advanced level of the T4 training (a link for staff only - opens in new window).

What is the Output URI?

The Output URI is used to override the use of the section name in a URL. It has no effect on the section name text being used in navigation links.

Where to find the Output URI setting

In the general tab of your webpage, under 'Advanced settings', you'll find a box labelled 'Output URI'.

What to enter in the Output URI field

Enter text that you'd prefer to have instead of the section name as the last segment of your page's URL. The text you enter should:

be in lower case (if you don't do this it will be converted into lower case anyway)
have no spaces

If your Output URI is more than one word, it's better to separate these with hyphens, e.g. 'reading-list' rather than 'readinglist'. Don't use underscores for this, so not 'reading_list'. The reasons for this are:

URLs with separated words are easier to read, and potentially less ambiguous.
Search engines rank pages more successfully if the words in their URLs are separated.
Search engines will consider words separated by a hyphen to be separate; they don't do the same for words separated by underscores.

Technical Terms

Output URI

In the term Output URI, URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier. In the context of T4, this is really just a name to differentiate it from URL and it has no further significance.

Field

A field is the technical name for a box where you enter text in an online form or other webpage.

Underscore

An underscore is the '_' character; it's lower than the mid-height hyphen: '-'.

Preserving a URL when changing the section name

If your webpage doesn't already have an Output URI, and you want to change the section name, you can preserve the current URL of your page by simply adding the current section name to the Output URI field.

Example

A T4 section is called 'Population', which is also the link text for the page in the navigation. The page has the URL https://www.exeter.ac.uk/polar/antarctic/penguins/population, as its output URI is blank.

There is intention to change the T4 section name, and hence the navigation link, to a more descriptive 'Population changes during the 20th century' while keeping the URL as it is.

In order to do this, the text 'population' is entered into the page's Output URI field, and this is saved before the section name is then changed.

So then the URL remains unchanged while the navigation link is given the new name.

If your page already has an Output URI then, from a web address point of view, it doesn't matter when you change the section name; the URL will be unaffected.

Key points to remember

As discussed, the main advantage of having an Output URI is that if you subsequently change the section name then the URL of your page, and any subpages, will be unaffected. This leaves you free to focus solely on navigation link use when naming your section.

However, once you've set the Output URI and the page has subsequently been published, you shouldn't alter it, as this will change the URL, which can in turn:

affect search engine listings of the page and its subpages.
break links if websites outside the University have linked to the old URL of the page or its subpages.
break any bookmarks/favourites that people may have saved of the page or its subpages.
mean that any URLs already in print will no longer work, including those created as QR codes (which will need to be recreated).

Sometimes this can't be helped, but wherever possible it should be avoided.

Don't forget that T4 will use the section name for the final segment of the webpage's URL whenever the Output URI box is left blank – so this is what will happen if the Output URI is ever deleted.