FOI release

URLs handled by the GOV.UK Transition Tool

Published 30 January 2015

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 transition of government agency and departmental websites to GOV.UK. It’s used to manage the database of URL mappings for source websites being redirected to GOV.UK.

These mappings are then read and implemented by a separate application called ‘Bouncer’. 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’t hold information on this traffic, so it isn’t 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 (‘sites-2015-01-27T10:26:13+00:00.csv’)

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 Cabinet Office Charter Mark archive page)
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 (‘New URL for global 301’ and ‘Append requested path to new URL’)
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 ‘new URL for global 301’ for the redirect (true or false)

2.2 Hosts (‘hosts-2015-01-27T10:26:13+00:00.csv’)

This file contains a list of all domains for each website.

Field	Description
Site abbreviation	Unique website identifier from ‘sites’ CSV
Hostname	Full list of all domains for each department and agency website

2.3 Mappings (‘mappings-2015-01-27T10:26:13+00:00.csv’)

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 ‘sites’ 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 constructed by Bouncer using the website’s TNA timestamp)
Suggested URL	Additional URL where an archive page links on to recommended content that doesn’t sit on a government domain (eg archived guidance on firework safety)