Websites/Taskforce/Proposals/Domain Name Strategy

Domain Name Strategy

Note: This strategy applies only to websites and does not intend to cover anything to do with email addresses.

Working Group

John Slater, Janet Swisher, and David Boswell

Problem

We are currently using our organizational structure as a way to set up domain names and this is presenting irrelevant information to people and diverting our message away from more important things, such as what we do and why we do it.

For example, the following are some of the organizational domains currently in use:

• mozilla.com
• mozillamessaging.com
• mozilla-europe.org
• mozillaonline.com
• mozilla.jp

Note that mozilla.org is not an organizational domain -- it is the community's domain that was set up and used long before there was any Mozilla organization. It isn't the Foundation's organizational domain -- that is mozillafoundation.org that was in use briefly but has been retired.

Solution

To be able to stop using organizations as a basis for our domain name strategy, we need to develop an alternate domain name strategy that uses something other than organizations for its structure. There seem to be two main options:

• Structure a strategy based on product/activity: firefox.com, thunderbird.com, drumbeat.org, etc.

• Structure a strategy based on the idea that the universe is all one big Mozilla site: mozilla.org/firefox, mozilla.org/thunderbird, mozilla.org/drumbeat, etc.

Both options have advantages and disadvantages, so there should be some discussion. We can also learn by doing. We propose taking some of the sites currently in the Firefox hub and changing them as needed to learn what works and what doesn't. That can then be a model for dealing with other organization-based domains.

"One Mozilla" Strategy

We propose the following principles for structuring URLs as part of a "One Mozilla" strategy.

Short version: Use sub-domains for functional areas and sub-directories for products and programs (programs in the initiative sense and not applications) with some exceptions.

The following breaks out how this applies to different types of sites.

Products and Programs

Sites related to the major activities backed by Mozilla organizations should use sub-directories on mozilla.org to appear to be part of the top-level mozilla.org site.

Examples:

• www.mozilla.org/firefox
• www.mozilla.org/thunderbird
• www.mozilla.org/drumbeat

Note: Other community-backed projects such as seamonkey-project.org can show affiliation with Mozilla on their site in a number of other ways without having to change their URL structure.

Product Services

Sites that exist to host services related to our products and programs should have sub-domains based on site content and sub-directories based on products or program with Firefox content being the default (this is the existing addons.mozilla.org model).

Examples:

• addons.mozilla.org, addons.mozilla.org/mobile, addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird, etc.

• support.mozilla.org, support.mozilla.org/mobile, support.mozilla.org/thunderbird, etc.

• nightly.mozilla.org, nightly.mozilla.org/mobile, nightly.mozilla.org/thunderbird, etc.

To help with discoverability and consistency each of these sites should have the same 'Other Application' widget in roughly the same location.

Community-wide Sites

Sites that exist to serve Mozilla as a whole and not any particular product or program should simply use a mozilla.org sub-domain.

Examples:

• air.mozilla.org
• developer.mozilla.org
• feeds.mozilla.org

Campaign Sites

Mini-sites set up for a specific campaign should be able to use whatever URL makes sense. Because these sites are usually relevant to a specific time, an archiving plan should be put in place so this content isn't abandoned.

Examples:

• firefoxflicks.com
• opentochoice.org
• operationfirefox.com

This also includes URLs that are used for redirects to other sites, such as getfirefox.com, firefox.com or firefoxcup.com. Note how firefoxcup.com now points to a blog post wrapping up the campaign.

Local Sites

There are two main URL styles being used today by local sites.

Examples:

• mozilla.country: mozilla.jp, mozilla.ro, etc.
• mozilla-country.org: mozilla-mexico.org, mozilla-russia.org, etc.

There are also a variety of other URLs in use such as bgzilla.org and mozilla.org.ua. It may make sense to make these more consistent, but there is no plan to do that now.

Other Sites

Mozilla is a big community with many people doing many things and there's no benefit to making every site fit in some structure. It is fine for sites to have unique URLs as long as they avoid organization specific domains or trademark violations.

Examples:

• accessfirefox.org
• geckozone.org
• mozillamemory.org

Proposed URL Changes

Using the principles of the "One Mozilla" strategy, we suggest the following URL changes (this is just an initial batch and not comprehensive of all possible URL changes).

Existing URL	Proposed URL	Comment
mozilla.com	mozilla.org/firefox
mozillamessaging.com	mozilla.org/thunderbird
support.mozilla.com	support.mozilla.org
mobile.support.mozilla.com	support.mozilla.org/mobile
support.mozillamessaging.com	support.mozilla.org/thunderbird
air.mozilla.com	air.mozilla.org
feeds.mozilla.com	feeds.mozilla.org
input.mozilla.com	input.mozilla.org
mozilla.status.net	status.mozilla.net	[Booker]
spreadfirefox.com	engagement.mozilla.org/firefox	[Booker]
spreadthunderbird.com	engagement.mozilla.org/thunderbird	[Booker]