www.salford.gov.uk is the principal internet website domain for Salford City Council.
All Salford City Council divisions, directorates, business units and collaborative projects where Salford City Council is the majority funder or partner are required to publish their web content solely on the www.salford.gov.uk domain.
Multiple websites weaken the potential power of the overall organization on the web. Each new website dissipates that power, as the web sees a range of websites, each with a relatively small set of links.
If the organisation behaved as a single website (as, for example, the BBC and Apple generally do), then all incoming links would converge under a single website address, thus making the organisation more powerful, visible and credible.
Salford City Council tries to operate a single domain name policy in line with central government guidance:
"It will not help users find the information or services they need if authorities generate a number of sites, all with different names, each one relating to a different initiative or department. The more names an authority invents for its websites, the less its sites will be trusted; citizens will be less and less confident that the information they are getting is genuinely from a local government organisation.
"The public should not have to wade through a number of different domains to find the information that they want. If the local authority has decided to have more than one website or provide different types of services on a .com, .org.uk or another namespace other than .gov, then, on the front page of each of its websites, the authority should place a clear link to a page that explains its domain name policy.
"This policy should be enforced consistently across the authority's websites."
For a number of reasons (for example established use or perhaps participation in a national strategy that requires the setting up of a separate, standalone website), a number of specialist website domains exist for Salford City Council online content in addition to www.salford.gov.uk.
These are:
From time to time it may be appropriate for new internet domain names to be set up in order to promote specific initiatives or individual services of the council. A central record of Salford City Council internet domain names is maintained by the council's Marketing and Communications division.
Any officer seeking to acquire a new internet domain name must arrange the purchase through the council's webmaster (webmaster@salford.gov.uk) rather than acting independently.