One of the really good decisions we made early on was to make sure our WCMS captured and generated a human-readable URL structure. Quite a few WCMS systems still generate nasty, query-based URLs that look like : www.companyname.com/val=345234057$^%$*^(7876**&(*&97659%8650
You really need to be able to look at a URL and know exactly what page on the site it represents. Real URLs that look like: www.companyname.com/sitearea/subarea/subfolder/language/filename.html give you a way to talk about site areas and particular pages with a common taxonomy that everyone understands.
When someone tells me, “We have a problem with the ‘hammer’ product page in the ‘tools’ section,” I know what they are saying and what page they are talking about.
Besides the fact the search engines can’t do anything with a long, query-based URL, the site owners usually can’t either. I love that I can look at a URL for a page on my site and instantly know where it fits in the site structure and what the content and navigation should be.
Keep the query string out of the URL.
Friday, February 1, 2008
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