4 ms·

A lot of missteps in the early days of web technologies have made stable URLs impractical, unfortunately. One problem is that someone decided to include file n

A lot of missteps in the early days of web technologies have made stable URLs impractical, unfortunately. One problem is that someone decided to include file name extensions. Maybe this happened naturally because web servers made it so easy to expose entire directory structures to the web. And yet, this continues to be used for lots of other things. It is so ridiculous that a ".asp" or ".php" or ".cgi" causes every link, everywhere to depend on your arbitrary implementation details! Another problem is that many software stacks are just not using brains when it comes to what would make a useful URL. Years ago I was very frustrated working with an enterprise software company that wanted to sell us a bug-tracking system and they didn’t have simple things like "server.net/123456" to access bug #123456; instead, the URL was something absolutely heinous that wouldn’t even fit on a single line (causing wrapping in E-mails and such). Speaking of E-mail, I have received many E-mails over time that consisted of like TWELVE steps to instruct people on how to reach a file on the web. The entire concept of having a simple, descriptive and stable URL was completely lost on these people. It was always: 1. go to home page, 2. click here, ..., 11. click on annoying “content management system” with non-standard UI that generates unbookmarkable link, 12. access document. These utterly broken systems began to proliferate and it rapidly reached the point where most of the content that mattered (at least inside companies) was not available in any sane way so deep-linking to URLs became pointless.

_greim_ 10y ago
Can't remember where I first read it but back when "canonical URLs" were finally starting to get traction the saying went that: > The more expensive the CMS, the crappier the URLs.
SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
>A lot of missteps in the early days of web technologies have made stable URLs impractical, unfortunately. Preserving URLs across technology migrations is always possible (assuming the old documents or at least a rough equivalent still exist in the new system), and usually not even hard, to achieve. Rewrites are not rocket science. Assuming short-sighted developers put .php on the end of all the links, migrating to a better system can use rewrite rules that trivially remove any .php ending from a URL, or that remap old folder layouts to new folder layouts. Even if you can't use mod-rewrite because of complexity that it can't handle, all you need is a server with a hash map (or equivalent) that responds with 301 redirects [1] from the old poorly designed link to the newer, cleaner link. The other problem you mention (no deep linking at all) is its own form of stupidity in design, but since the deep links don't even exist, that's a separate issue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301

_greim_ 10y ago

Can't remember where I first read it but back when "canonical URLs" were finally starting to get traction the saying went that: > The more expensive the CMS, the crappier the URLs.

SomeCallMeTim 10y ago

>A lot of missteps in the early days of web technologies have made stable URLs impractical, unfortunately. Preserving URLs across technology migrations is always possible (assuming the old documents or at least a rough equivalent still exist in the new system), and usually not even hard, to achieve. Rewrites are not rocket science. Assuming short-sighted developers put .php on the end of all the links, migrating to a better system can use rewrite rules that trivially remove any .php ending from a URL, or that remap old folder layouts to new folder layouts. Even if you can't use mod-rewrite because of complexity that it can't handle, all you need is a server with a hash map (or equivalent) that responds with 301 redirects [1] from the old poorly designed link to the newer, cleaner link. The other problem you mention (no deep linking at all) is its own form of stupidity in design, but since the deep links don't even exist, that's a separate issue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301