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User-Centered URL Design
Adaptive Path has this interesting essay by Jesse James Garrett on user friendly URL design. When websites were just static files, they were often named in a friendly way, just to make it easier for the designer. But today, many dynamic web sites and CMS's are based around extremely long and complicated URLs that are difficult to work with (ever try to read one to someone over the phone?). This essay explores the way some websites use redirects and smart naming schemes to keep URL's easy and friendly.
Brent Simmons' Law of CMS URLs:
The more expensive the Content Management System, the crappier the URLs. Compare, for instance, StoryServer's weird comma-delimited numeric URLs to Radio UserLand's human-readable (and guessable) URLs. Then compare the prices--orders of magnitudes of difference. So, at least in this respect, there's an inverse relationship between price and quality.
cpeterso
My site is 100% static HTML, but my rules of thumb for URLs include:
- never more than 80 chars, so they can be emailed
without wrapping
- no uppercase, ever (otherwise you'll forget where
the caps were)
- never more than two directories deep (I sometimes
break this due to bad planning)
- if a new page seems likely to grow into many
pages, it should be created as foo/index.html
instead of foo.html (Someone emailed me this
brilliant tip, I forget who though.)
But the bottom line is to arrange directories
and files (and their names) so that you can
remember them without having to doublecheck.
Anyone else find it a bit ironic that an article that is offering suggestions for cleaner URLs and undoing the damage of CMS naming conventions is named "000058.php" ?
Help me, I've gone link-mad! (But those are all good reads.)
Really nifty utility for dealing with sites that choose the long obfuscated URL approach...