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Claiming Your Slug

Module: ChemIQ For: Admin

Your portal slug is the short word (or two) that follows sds.tellusehs.com/ and becomes the public address of your SDS catalog. Picking it well matters — once your portal is live for 7 days, that slug is permanently reserved to your company. Forever. You can rename forward, but the old slug never returns to the namespace.

This page walks through the first-time claim flow, the character and reserved-word rules, what makes a good slug, and the 7-day activation rule that locks it in.

Where to Claim​

  1. Open ChemIQ from the main navigation
  2. Go to Public SDS Portal
  3. The Portal Config panel shows a slug input field with a Tellus-suggested default

The default is auto-generated from your company name in kebab-case — for example, "Acme Chemicals, Inc." becomes acme-chemicals. You can accept it or type your own.

Character Rules​

The slug input enforces a strict character set so that URLs are clean, copy-pasteable, and indexable by search engines:

RuleConstraint
Allowed charactersLowercase letters a-z, digits 0-9, and hyphen - only
Length3 to 50 characters
Must start withA letter (not a digit, not a hyphen)
Must end withA letter or digit (not a hyphen)
Consecutive hyphensNot allowed — acme--chemicals is rejected
CaseLowercase only — uppercase input is auto-converted
Spaces, underscores, dots, slashes, special charactersNot allowed

The input validates as you type. A red message appears under the field the moment you type a forbidden character or break a rule. The Save slug button stays disabled until validation passes.

Real-Time Availability Check​

As you type a valid slug, Tellus checks the database for two things:

  1. Conflict check — is this slug already claimed by another Tellus customer?
  2. Reserved-word check — is this slug on the protected list?

If the Slug Is Taken​

You'll see a Not available — already claimed message. Tellus also offers two auto-generated alternatives you can pick with one click:

  • Your slug + your state code, e.g., acme-chemicals-tx
  • Your slug + a numeric suffix, e.g., acme-chemicals-2

Or just type something else. There's no trademark dispute workflow at this level — if you believe another customer has claimed your company's name, route that to support.

If the Slug Is Reserved​

You'll see This is a reserved name. Please choose a different slug.

Reserved slugs fall into a few categories. The full list is maintained by Tellus and updated over time, but the patterns are predictable:

CategoryExamples
Tellus brand and internal routestellus, chemiq, safepath, adminhq, support, help, docs, blog
Infrastructure pathsapi, app, www, admin, auth, login, signup, dashboard, account, static, widget
US federal regulators (and anything starting with them)osha, epa, niosh, nfpa, chemtrec, acgih, dot, fda, cdc, plus state-plan variants like cal-osha, mosh, iosha
International regulatorsreach, echa, clp, whmis, worksafe, hse, coshh, kosha
Generic abuse-prone wordstest, demo, example, dev, staging, prod, null

The reserved list exists because a slug like osha-compliance or chemtrec could mislead a worker scanning a QR code into thinking they were looking at an official regulatory source. Tellus rejects these to protect the integrity of every customer's portal — yours included.

What Makes a Good Slug​

A slug is part URL, part brand asset. The best ones are short, recognizable, and tied to how your customers already think about you.

QualityWhy It Matters
ShortEasier to print on labels, type into a phone, or read on a poster. 3-12 characters is the sweet spot.
Brand-alignedShould map cleanly to your company name or trade name — not an internal abbreviation no one recognizes.
No version numbersacme-2026 ages badly. Use acme-chemicals or acme.
No site referencesThe slug is company-wide, not site-specific. acme-houston is wrong if you also operate in Dallas.
PronounceableCustomers may read it from your invoice and type it into a browser. Hard-to-pronounce slugs get mistyped.

Examples that work:

  • acme-chemicals — clear, brand-aligned, easy to type
  • cleanpro — short, matches the trade name
  • wmc — a known acronym for Western Midstream
  • painthouse-tx — disambiguates against another painthouse in another state

Examples to avoid:

  • acmechem2026v2-final — too long, too version-coded
  • co123 — meaningless to customers
  • safety-data-sheets-by-acme — too verbose

Saving Your Slug​

Once the slug shows the green Available check, click Save slug. Tellus immediately:

  1. Reserves the slug to your company in the database
  2. Activates the slug for use in URLs
  3. Shows the Visit ↗ button next to your slug in the Portal Config panel (see Visiting Your Portal)

At this point, your catalog URL exists. Visiting it before you've published a product shows an empty branded catalog — see Publishing a Product for the next step.

The 7-Day Activation Rule​

This is the most important rule on the page. Read it twice.

A slug becomes permanently reserved to your company once any product under it has been public for 7 consecutive days.

The 7-day window exists for one reason: to give you time to catch a typo or change your mind before the slug locks. Up until that 7-day mark passes on your first published product, you can rename your slug freely and the old one returns to the namespace.

After the 7-day mark passes, the slug is locked. You can still rename forward (see Renaming Your Slug) — but the old slug will live forever as a permanent redirect to your new URL, and it can never be claimed by another company.

StateWhat it meansEffect of rename
Pre-activation (no products published, or fewer than 7 days since first publish)The slug is yours but not yet lockedRename releases the old slug back to the namespace; no redirect created
Activated (any product has been public for ≥ 7 consecutive days)The slug is permanently reserved to your companyRename creates a permanent 301 redirect from the old slug to the new one; old slug never returns to the namespace

Why This Exists​

Chemical containers carry their labels for years. A drum of solvent printed with a QR code today might be sitting in a warehouse five years from now, scanned by a worker during a spill. If Tellus ever recycled a slug to a different company, that worker would land on the wrong SDS — and act on the wrong hazard information.

This is an OSHA-driven safety decision under 29 CFR 1910.1200(g). It isn't configurable, and it isn't negotiable.

If you want to test, sandbox, or experiment with portal slugs before going live for real, do it in the development environment at dev.tellusehs.com first.

Permissions​

RoleCan claim the slug
Admin✓
Manager—
Program Coordinator—
Employee—

Only Admins can claim, rename, or change the portal slug. Managers and Coordinators can see the slug and visit the live portal, but they cannot change it.