URLs handled by the 188体育 Transition Tool
Published 30 January 2015
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This publication is available at /government/publications/response-to-request-for-urls-handled-by-the-govuk-transition-tool/urls-handled-by-the-govuk-transition-tool
Thank you for your email dated 12 January 2015 requesting information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
1. The GDS Transition Tool
The Transition Tool is an application built by the Government Digital Service (GDS) to support the It鈥檚 used to manage the database of URL mappings for source websites being redirected to 188体育.
These mappings are then read and implemented by a separate application called Because Bouncer applies further rules to respond to all known variants of the URLs in the Transition Tool data, it handles many more URLs than are present in the data.
The attached files explain what happens where traffic is being redirected via GDS applications. Some traffic is handled internally by departments and agencies. GDS doesn鈥檛 hold information on this traffic, so it isn鈥檛 included in the attached data. Some redirects set up internally by departments and agencies may also override the redirects in this data.
2. Description of the files
This response is accompanied by 3 CSV files containing mapping data from 27 January 2015. The data will continue to change as a result of ongoing work to review and improve redirects following transition.
2.1 Websites (鈥榮ites-2015-01-27T10:26:13+00:00.csv鈥�)
This file contains data about all websites handled by the Transition Tool.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | A unique identifier for each website that links the data across the 3 files |
| Launch date | Manually entered as a single date for each site, so may not reflect redirect dates for websites that were transitioned in stages, or where transitions were rearranged |
| New homepage | URL that the homepage of the old website redirects to |
| TNA timestamp | Identifies the date of the default National Archives crawl, which is used to construct links on archive pages (eg the link to the National Archives on the |
| Significant querystring parameters (colon separated) | Used for websites where the CMS generates complex query strings at the end of URLs that need to be mapped differently |
| Global HTTP status | Used to indicate if a whole website redirects to a single URL or is archived, along with two additional fields to specify behaviour (鈥楴ew URL for global 301鈥� and 鈥楢ppend requested path to new URL鈥�) |
| New URL for global 301 | Single URL for a whole website if all source URLs redirect to one place |
| Append requested path to new URL | Specifies whether the path from the request is added to the end of the 鈥榥ew URL for global 301鈥� for the redirect (true or false) |
2.2 Hosts (鈥榟osts-2015-01-27T10:26:13+00:00.csv鈥�)
This file contains a list of all domains for each website.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Site abbreviation | Unique website identifier from 鈥榮ites鈥� CSV |
| Hostname | Full list of all domains for each department and agency website |
2.3 Mappings (鈥榤appings-2015-01-27T10:26:13+00:00.csv鈥�)
This file contains a list of mappings for each website. It excludes superseded mappings for sites that now have global HTTP statuses (where the whole site now redirects to a single URL).
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Site abbreviation | Unique website identifier from 鈥榮ites鈥� CSV |
| Old path | Source URL on redirected website |
| HTTP status | 301 for redirected content, or 410 for archived content |
| Redirect URL | Destination URL for redirected content |
| Custom archive URL | Used to override the default National Archives URL (which is using the website鈥檚 TNA timestamp) |
| Suggested URL | Additional URL where an archive page links on to recommended content that doesn鈥檛 sit on a government domain (eg |