By default, your blog site’s web address will be in this format: example.blogs.bristol.ac.uk.
There are three ways you can customise the web address for your publicly available site:
Request a top-level redirect
You can request a short URL that works as an automatic redirect. A short URL for your blog can help you with promotion and campaigning.
For example, bristol.ac.uk/example will redirect to example.blogs.bristol.ac.uk.
Change part of the address
You can email the Digital Experience team and ask us to edit the first part of the address of your blog site. This is known as the subdomain. There’s no cost to edit this.
Remove ‘blogs’ from the address
You can ask us to remove the ‘blogs’ part from the URL. This is done when you’re using a blog site for research or project purposes, or something similar.
For example, the original site address your-site.blogs.bristol.ac.uk becomes your-site.bristol.ac.uk.
Change the user-specified part of the address
You can ask us to change the user-specified part of the address if there’s a:
- change to the name of your team, project, or department
- typo in the address.
For example, the original site address oldproject.blogs.bristol.ac.uk becomes newproject.blogs.bristol.ac.uk.
If your site is well established we’ll redirect the old address to the new one.
Buy a new domain name
In some cases, the bristol.ac.uk domain may not be appropriate – for example, if your site represents a multi-institution partnership. In these cases you can pay for a custom domain name.
To get started visit 123.reg to check if the domain is available and note the quoted prices. Do not buy the domain name yourself. The Digital Experience team and IT Directory Services manage the domain name procurement process.
Domains ending with .ac.uk are not on 123.reg, but you can check if a domain is already taken by typing it into a web browser.
Raise a request
When you’re ready, email web-editor@bristol.ac.uk with the:
- name and URL of the blog
- name of the custom domain you’d like
- name of domain owner for future communications
- how long you want the domain name for
- budget code to charge the cost to.
We’ll review your request and if approved we’ll purchase the domain name on your behalf. In some cases we may suggest an alternative.
Domains ending with .ac.uk are managed by the Jisc domain registry. IT Directory Services will liaise between you and Jisc to confirm eligibility.