autodesk.com and MURLs

28 March 2007

I have received a few emails about the Autodesk website update that occurred last week. Much of the feedback was good and then some had to do with broken bookmarked URLs. It is with a sincere thank you and hats off to Autodesk Web Gurus Tom Williams and Eric Wright for compiling the following information for me.

The URLs for autodesk.com are based on the category structure of the website, and have and will change over time. We do our best to avoid this, but structural changes to the site architecture sometimes lead to URLs changing.

Because of this, we recommend always using Marketing URL redirects when including links to content in print, in product or elsewhere where the URL needs to be "guaranteed" not to change. These are set up for support, training, and other high-level categories, typically following a structure of www.autodesk.com/product-category.

Example: www.autodesk.com/autocad-support

Additionally, for Support Knowledge Base, Tips, and Data & Download content, we created a redirect "system" called "getdoc". Similar to marketing URLs, getdoc allows you to append to a root URL the TS or TD# (Knowledge Base), TP# (Tips) or the download ID (DL#) displayed on the content:

Example: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL5620053

These redirects will continue to function even if the "true" autodesk.com URL changes.

Below are a sampling of Marketing URLs "MURLs":

Product Update MURLs

AutoCAD
http://www.autodesk.com/autocad-updates

AutoCAD LT
http://www.autodesk.com/autocadlt-updates

AutoCAD Mechanical
http://www.autodesk.com/autocadmech-updates

AutoCAD Civil 3D
http://www.autodesk.com/civil3d-updates

Autodesk Inventor
http://www.autodesk.com/inventor-updates

AutoCAD Map 3D
http://www.autodesk.com/map3d-updates

Revit Architecture
http://www.autodesk.com/revitbuilding-updates

Product Support MURLs