# WEB-014 — Staging, admin and internal hosts must not be the brand website

> Non-production hosts — staging, dev, preview, admin, internal — are not acceptable brand websites.

- **Rule ID:** WEB-014
- **Layer:** Website (`WEBSITE`)
- **Checks:** `brand.website`
- **Severity:** BLOCKING — Breaking this rule gets the submission rejected outright.
- **When it bites:** Gates approval — get this wrong and registration is refused
- **How it is detected:** Deterministic (settled in code from the submitted values)
- **Fix type:** Fix the field — a better value in the form clears it
- **Required by:** TCR, Twilio, Bandwidth
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/website/web-014/

## Why this rule exists

A staging host is not the business's public presence, is frequently access-gated, and often disappears between submission and review. Submitting one usually means someone pasted the URL they had open rather than the live site.

## How to fix it

Submit the public production URL customers actually visit. If the staging host is the only one currently live, launch the production site before registering — the vetter will re-fetch this URL days later and a staging box is usually gone by then.

## Example of a compliant value

```text
https://acmecoffee.com rather than https://staging.acmecoffee.com
```