Optimizing SharePoint Site Naming: Expert Guidelines

Key insights

• Central site creation and formal naming conventions improve SharePoint site management.
• Avoiding spaces, special characters, and long URLs in site names prevents issues and enhances user experience.
• Numeric URLs, while unique, can be confusing and uninformative to users.
• Incorporating short, meaningful abbreviations and identifiers in site names (like "p-ictprt" for a project in ICT) is effective for organization and user navigation.
• Adjusting site names post-creation to something more intuitive helps maintain an information scent while keeping URLs manageable.

SharePoint Site Naming Conventions

Effective SharePoint site management is crucial for organizations to ensure a smooth and efficient digital workspace. A key aspect of this management is the adoption of proper site naming conventions, which play a significant role in the overall usability and maintenance of the SharePoint environment. These conventions help in organizing sites in a meaningful manner, making it easier for users to navigate and locate the information they need. By centralizing the creation of sites and implementing a formal naming convention, organizations can avoid the chaos of cluttered and confusing site directories. 

The blog post discusses the author's experiences with SharePoint site naming conventions across three different organizations, highlighting the importance of a well-thought-out naming strategy. Gregory Zelfond's SharePoint Maven newsletter inspired the author to share these insights, emphasizing the best practices for naming SharePoint sites. Through the author's journey, it becomes evident how varied naming conventions can impact the orderliness and usability of SharePoint environments.

Initially, the author encountered a lack of a formal naming convention, where sites were created centrally but lacked standardized names. This approach included short names without spaces or special characters and some meaningful abbreviations. Despite the large organization size, this method worked moderately well due to the limited use of SharePoint at the time.

• Good practice: Central site creation, short names, no spaces or special characters.
• Bad practice: No formal naming convention.

In the second intranet experience, the author faced significant challenges due to decentralized site creation and the absence of a naming convention. Site collections were managed by business owners, leading to complex site structures and issues with URL length. This organization later migrated to SharePoint Online and adopted a basic numeric naming convention, which, despite being organized, was not user-friendly.

• Good practice: Transition to stand-alone sites, centralized site creation.
• Bad practice: Long URLs, spaces in URLs, not meaningful to users.

The third and final experience showcases a structured approach with central site creation and a solid naming convention, significantly improving the system's organization and usability. This strategy involved using letters and abbreviations to denote the site's purpose and associated department, creating a more intuitive and manageable environment.

• Good practice: Central site creation, formal naming convention, meaningful and short names.
• Bad practice: Minimal, except for the occasional dash in the URL.

Read the full article SharePoint site naming conventions – my experience