The information in this blogpost may now be out of date. See the current GOV.UK content and publishing guidance.
When linking from one Inside Government [Whitehall] document to another the pro-tip here is to go to the document list in admin > locate document > right-click ‘copy link address’ > paste this into the document you are creating.
Don’t copy-and-paste previewed URLs because we do not rewrite those links automatically.
For example:
BOO HISS
https://whitehall-admin.production.alphagov.co.uk/travel-insurance?cachebust=1362409293&preview=139044
HURRAY
https://whitehall-admin.production.alphagov.co.uk/government/admin/detailed-guides/189802
Note that the correct link contains ‘admin’ and a number, as opposed to a human-friendly and readable slug. Nor does it have all that nasty cache busting going on at the end.
We have seen a number of recent Zendesk tickets reporting this incorrectly as a technical bug.
*UPDATE*
if you are linking from one Whitehall page to another (regardless of status) it is advisable to use the admin url because this protects it against frontend changes.
Just to be clear, you can use admin URLs to link from document to document:
- Policy
- Publication
- News
- Consultation
- Speech
- Detailed guide
- Priority
- Location news
- Case study
- Statistical data set
- Fatality
Whereas public URLs should be used when linking from documents to:
- Document series
- Organisation
- Policy team
- Policy group
- Role
- People
- Topic
- Topical event
- Worldwide organisation
- Worldwide location
- Field of operation
Instructions on this distinction are also provided in the ‘Formatting help’ when creating a new document.
