United Nations

In this analysis we evaluate the www.un.org website.

The United Nations website is basically static and doesn't seem to have been well planned. As an example we can compare the About us section in different languages:

http://www.un.org/aboutun/
http://www.un.org/french/aboutun/index.shtml
http://www.un.org/spanish/aboutun/index.shtml

The french and spanish sections show some structural similarities, but as soon as we explore the website a little deeper we find stronger layout inconsistencies:

Charter of the United Nations:

http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/index.html
http://www.un.org/french/aboutun/charte/index.html
http://www.un.org/spanish/aboutun/charter/index.htm

Site index:

http://www.un.org/site_index/
http://www.un.org/french/index/index.shtml
http://www.un.org/spanish/site_index/

It seems that site content has been translated and put in folders corresponding to each language in a non-systematic way. Maintainability must be a big problem for those who manage this website.

Almost no metadata is defined, except in some french pages. Most of the urls are not friendly and neither localized.

The website has also some dynamic sections and there we have found even bigger problems there are beyound our analysis.

To sum up: the United Nations website has many structural problems and needs to be completely restructured to become more easily manageable.