Change a SharePoint subsite name and URL

Sometimes “Marketing” becomes “Communication” or you’ve changed a site URL naming convention so that instead of “sharepoint.mycompany.com/marketing” you’ll be shortening all department sites to something like “sharepoint.mycompany.com/mark”. Follow these steps to change the name and URL for a SharePoint subsite.

Note: If you’re trying to change the URL for a top-level site (site collection level), you’ll need to change the URL as an administrator using PowerShell.

1. Go to site settings on the subsite you’re updating
   
2. Select “Title, description, and logo” under “Look and Feel”
3. Change the title and scroll down to change the URL and click OK
   
4. Verify the changes were successful (check the subsite home page)
   

Things to consider after you’ve changed the URL:

• Make sure the main users and site owners of that site are aware of the change (ideally before the change is made) and can help discover and resolve any outstanding issues afterwards
• Governance documentation, policies or resources referring to the site by name (or URL) will need updated
• Any documents your users had created with URLs copied and pasted into them will need updated to reflect the URL change
• Any bookmarks or navigational elements your site(s) or users have will need updated (both URL and name)
• Any JavaScript, css, etc. scripts referencing content hosted on that subsite will need updated (unless links were relative)

To avoid all of these sorts of updates after a URL change, try to use relative URLs when creating links as much as possible.