188体育

Public-facing services in public beta or live must have a starting point hosted on 188体育. This is usually a start page.

You should start planning this before your alpha assessment.

Before your alpha assessment

Your service owner or content designer should get in touch with the Government Digital Service (GDS) content team. Do this midway through your alpha, once you鈥檝e got:

• a name for your service
• a set of user needs you know the service needs to meet
• an idea of the sorts of changes to 188体育 content you think might be necessary

It鈥檚 useful to share anything else you鈥檝e got that explains what your service will do, for example any sketches you鈥檝e done.

Before you get in touch, speak to the people in your organisation responsible for publishing on 188体育 - they can chat about your request and help you raise a ticket. Ask them to copy you into the ticket so you can talk to the GDS content team directly.

The GDS content team will consider the impact your service will have on other 188体育 content, and assess whether any of that related content needs to change. Throughout the development process, they鈥檒l also:

• work with you to draft a start point for your service on 188体育 - this will usually be a start page
• create a feedback page - also known as a 鈥榙one鈥� page

Once you鈥檝e talked about how your start point on 188体育 might look, you can .

The pages will not be published on 188体育 until your service has passed its beta assessment.

After your alpha assessment

Once you鈥檝e agreed the start point for your service, you鈥檒l need to get a service domain name.

You must only advertise the URL (or short URL) for your start point on 188体育 - and only once it鈥檚 been agreed.

It鈥檚 important your users start their journey from the 188体育 start point for your service. This is because your 188体育 start point includes the information a user needs to complete the service.

After your beta assessment

You can begin using your service domain once you鈥檝e passed your beta assessment.

To do this, you鈥檒l need to request your domain name delegation.

Setting up delegation can take up to 5 working days. Once it鈥檚 done, use DNS to perform domain validation and set up security certificates for your service.

You鈥檒l also need to contact the GDS content team to let them know to publish your service start point and feedback page.

Related guides

You may also find these guides useful:

• Get a service domain
• Managing domain names