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Posted by Toby Inkster on 12/20/06 07:25
Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> Not in my experience. I've seen Google visit both of them. IMHO it
> more depends on the number of incoming links than the file extension.
Not replying specifically to you Jerry, but to the whole thread... many of
its participants could benefit from reading:
Hypertext Style: Cool URIs Don't Change
http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
It's an old article (1998, with a few more recent updates) but still
relevant today. See especially the heading "What to leave out" which
suggests not including any "extension". (The word "extension" doesn't
have any real meaning in a URI context -- it's a Microsoft Windows
concept.) This makes sense because it may well be that a particlar
page begins in one format, but eventually becomes another format.
Consider, for example, a voluntary organisation that runs a lot of
local events. They've been a bit slow to keep up with modern technology,
so although they do have a small website, they mainly publish their
listing of upcoming events as a paper copy. A volunteer regularly
scans in a copy of this event listing, saves it as a JPEG and uploads
it to their website. Thankfully, their website is being hosted by
someone clueful who has set up content negotiation, so instead of
the URL being this:
http://www.toenail-aid.org/events.jpeg
It's this:
http://www.toenail-aid.org/events
Eventually, they realise that the online event listing is becoming
more popular than the printed version, so they decide to turn the online
listing into an HTML page, so it can be updated as soon as a new event
has been organised, rather than waiting for the next print run. The URL
isn't:
http://www.toenail-aid.org/events.html
It's this:
http://www.toenail-aid.org/events
A small but successful online presence has helped Toenail Aid to become
the nation's largest ingrowing toenail support and advice organisation,
and they recieve a government grant to help them reach more sufferers.
They decide to spend part of this money hiring a developer to revamp their
website. He suggests that as the event listing has become huge and
unwieldly, they should ditch the battered copy of Frontplague Express that
they've been using to update it, and replace it with a database-backed
system, allowing event organisers all over the country to update their own
set of events, and for visitors to be able to search the website by
postcode and event type. The URL isn't
http://www.toenail-aid.org/events.php
It's this:
http://www.toenail-aid.org/events
--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
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