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Changing Your Portal URL
Your portal has its own web address, or URL, in the form https://yourorg.ourcatherder.com. The bold part — yourorg — is your portal's subdomain. If your organisation rebrands, changes its name, or simply wants a tidier address, we can change this for you.
Portal URL vs Portal Name
These are two different things, and it helps to be clear about which one you mean:
| Where it appears | How it's changed | |
|---|---|---|
| Portal URL (subdomain) | The web address in the browser, and in the links you share by email (e.g. yourorg.ourcatherder.com) | By our team — it's a breaking change, see below |
| Portal name | The organisation name shown inside the portal and on your documents | By you, any time, in Settings → Org. Details |
If you only want to update the displayed organisation name, you can do that yourself: go to Settings → Org. Details and edit the Organisation name field. This does not change your portal URL or affect any links you've shared. The rest of this guide covers changing the portal URL, which our team handles for you.
Is the Subdomain I Want Available?
Subdomains are unique across Our Cat Herder, so the address you'd like has to be free before we can assign it. Acronyms are common across the not-for-profit and association space, and on rare occasions the one you want is already claimed by another organisation on the platform. When you request the change, tell us your preferred subdomain and we'll confirm whether it's available.
This Is a Breaking Change
Previously shared links will stop working
Changing your portal URL is a breaking change. Any direct link you have already shared that points to the old address — for example a meeting link sent in a calendar invite, or a document or folder link emailed to members — will return a not-found error after the change, because that address no longer exists.
The content itself is not lost. The same meetings and documents remain fully accessible from within the portal — only the old links you shared externally will break.
Because of this, we recommend two things before you go ahead:
- Pick a quiet time. Schedule the change for a period of low board activity — not in the run-up to a board meeting, when members are likely to be clicking links you've recently sent them.
- Tell your members directly. Let all current portal members know the address is changing, so anyone who has bookmarked the old URL or kept old emails knows to sign in through the portal instead.
Bookmarks and branding
Ask members to bookmark the new portal URL. Signing in via your portal-specific address is also what displays your custom colours and logo on the login page — see Portal Customisation.
How to Request the Change
The portal URL is changed by our team rather than from within your portal settings.
- Email support@ourcatherder.com with your current portal URL and the new subdomain you'd like.
- Tell us whether you also want the displayed portal name updated.
- Suggest a suitable date and time for the change if timing matters to you (see the quiet-time recommendation above).
Once you've confirmed you wish to proceed and the subdomain is available, the change is usually actioned within 48 hours.
Related
- Portal Customisation — why the portal-specific URL matters for your branding
- Customising Colours and Images — written guide to portal theme and branding settings
- Multiple Portals — running more than one portal from a single login