Careful when updating Web Site Address field.

In MOSS, there is option to modify the URL of the site after creating it. To modify the URL of a site, we need to do the following.

Click on Site Settings --> Modify All Site Settings --> Title, Description and Icon

In the ‘Web Site Address’ field, change the URL as required and save. Now, the site can be accessed with the new URL. This is straight forward.

However there is an issue with this approach. We should be very very careful while updating this field. If the user who updates the URL, set the URL with a . (dot), for example “newurl.aspx”, then the site won’t be accessible at all. We should make sure that we don’t give . (dot) in the ‘Web Site Address’ field while updating it.

Update:

However it is difficult to instruct all the users to be aware of this issue and requesting them to be careful when updating this field. So, the workaround would be to create an 'WebMoving' event handler which will have the logic of removing the .(dot) and other special characters from the modified Web Site Address field so that the site can be saved with a valid URL.