A domain name is one of the essential identifiers that can be used to classify a website as belonging to a Lebanese government entity. The following are a set of guidelines that can be followed to obtain a standard naming pattern across all domain names for government websites.
- URLs must follow a consistent naming convention across all entities’ websites.
- Each entity must treat a domain name as intellectual property that has both financial and strategic value.
- Entities must use the “.gov.lb” as the top-level domain name.
- Entities’ domain names must not point to anything other than an entity’s home page on the “.gov.lb” domain or if it is held on one of the other public sector domains.
- A domain name should be explicit enough to help users know what to expect when they navigate to the associated URL.
- URLs should use real words rather than abbreviations to improve readability and ease of access.
- Spaces and special characters (e.g. ‘!’, ‘$’, ‘&’, ‘_’) must not be used.
- The hyphen ‘-‘ should not be used unless a certain convention is established where it is used to designate the type of entity owning the domain.
- Only letters from the English alphabet ‘a’ through ‘z’ should be used, knowing that the URL navigation mechanism is not case sensitive.
- A URL may contain a brand name or acronym that the entity is known for in cases where the entity name or services names are complicated and lengthy.
- Unnecessary words (e.g. prepositions or conjunctions) should be stripped out.
- URLs should be easy to pronounce and remember. It is optimal to have the URL of the form “www.entityname.gov.lb”.
- A naming that is consistent with the entity’s URL should be used for channel names that represent the entity on a third party website. (e.g. “www.youtube.com/entityname” when the entity’s domain name is “www.entityname.com”).
- As part of a defensive strategy, an entity may consider registering other, closely related domain names, for example, generic top-level domains (gTLDs) (e.g. “.com”, “.org”, “.info”) and in the “.lb” second level domains (SLDs) (e.g. “.com.lb”, “.org.lb”). this defensive strategy protects against the following:
- Typosquatting (common misspellings of a domain name),
- Cybersquatting (registration of domain names similar to the names of existing entities to be used in bad faith), and
- Cybersmearing (where anonymous authors set up websites that spread alternative, false or disparaging information).
- Sub-domains in a URL may be used in specific cases:
- For corporate extranet sites aimed at specific stakeholder audiences, usually under password control (e.g. e-Business, transfer of data from business entities to governmental websites etc.) and technical reasons force the use of a sub-domain,
- The sub-domain is forced for a temporary period because of technical reasons, and
- The delivery of a Web Service where it can’t be fully integrated.
- A domain name must be general and not indicate a specific geographical location or service, when the corresponding website’s content is not dedicated to that location or service.
- A domain name must reflect the legal name of the entity that owns the domain.
- Confusing domain names should be avoided (e.g. a name that can be confused with an existing domain name or with the name of an entity other than the one owning the domain).
- A domain name must not coincide with Internet protocols (e.g. “www”, “ftp” and “dns”).
- A domain name must not use abbreviations that have business or administrative meanings as in “llc” and “ltd”.
- A domain name must be of reasonable length and must not exceed 64 characters.
- A domain name must not infringe any existing trademarks or third party business names. Noting that the Lebanese Domain Registry (LBDR) requests that any applicant for an “.lb” domain name must first apply to register the root domain (in the form “www.abcdefgh.com.lb”). The LBDR validates the relevant country code top-level domain (ccTLD) as long as the corresponding trademark is valid.
- A domain name must be chosen carefully not to be understood as an advertisement for a certain product, service or third party business.
- Three and four letters domain names should be avoided unless there are no other reasonable and meaningful alternatives.
- Generic names must not be used (e.g. cars.gov.lb).