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Short URLs: Why and How

sive.rs

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Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#161

Post by anamax »

cryptonector wrote: post #137
rsync wrote: post #31

I don't like this at all - there is value in a hierarchical naming structure - even if it doesn't represent actual directories . A simple example is: https://www.kozubik.com/ ... where you can find "items": https://www.kozubik.com/items/ ... and one thing inside of "items" is an article on NDS emitters: https://www.kozubik.com/items/nds/ ... which contains supporting multimedia objects: https://www.kozubik.com/items/…

Your hierarchy won't necessarily help others. For URIs that leak into the UI/UX to be short is almost certainly good advice. You can always have them be redirects to the hierarchical names you would prefer. Don't believe me? Twitter, for example, has short, meaningful URIs for user's status pages, and long, meaningless-to-users URIs for tweets. And in the sea of tweets there is no hierarchy in their naming.

How does Twitter's lack of hierarchy demonstrate that hierarchy doesn't help anyone?

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#162

Post by nickm12 »

donohoe wrote: post #134

I believe this is a rather naive posts on the subject of URLs and honestly wish it never made it to HN front-page, but seeing as we are here... lets go through the points made and how they conflict with each other... "You can remember them" Well, no. You might remember a few. But you are only going to remember so much. This has a very limited benefit. "You can tell someone" Yeah, but no. I barely tell people a domain…

Yes to all of that. Plus the url of the post itself (https://sive.rs/su) takes this to a perverse extreme.

I agree that URLs should be humane, but typeable from memory is not the primary objective. Having people beable to read the URL and understand something about where it will go is. Also, unless you know your domain will only ever host one type of content, then having no hierarchy will lock you in. https://sive.rs/blog/on-short-urls is plenty short, but so much more valuable to any humans using the url.

If you don't agree that URLs need to be humane, then none of it matters and sure, use a UUID for every page.

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#163

Post by cryptonector »

anamax wrote: post #161
cryptonector wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your hierarchy won't necessarily help others. For URIs that leak into the UI/UX to be short is almost certainly good advice. You can always have them be redirects to the hierarchical names you would prefer. Don't believe me? Twitter, for example, has short, meaningful URIs for user's status pages, and long, meaningless-to-users URIs for tweets. And in the sea of tweets there is no hierarchy in their naming.

How does Twitter's lack of hierarchy demonstrate that hierarchy doesn't help anyone?

Me: Your hierarchy won't necessarily help others.

You: How does Twitter's lack of hierarchy demonstrate that hierarchy doesn't help anyone?

How did you read into my comment that I said that "hierarchy doesn't help anyone"?

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#164

Post by cinntaile »

xmprt wrote: post #156
cinntaile wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much my point, there is no reason to meddle with the contents here. It's different if you live in a country where your ISP automatically MiTMs you (as a sibling comment to yours pointed out), but that's not a thing here at least. If you know that's a threat and it bothers you, you would likely already have measures in place anyway? But I admit it's a valid reason to have https.

> but that's not a thing here at least Hackernews is a global website last time I checked so even if you don't face issues like that, many other users might.

You could have just cited the entire sentence, then my answer could be your answer to my answer. lol

Not sure why you're talking about HN though, the website in question was not HN.

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#165

Post by yencabulator »

corlinpalmer wrote: post #41
Brajeshwar wrote: post #2

I own a 3-letter domain with a 2-letter TLD and still spells my family name. Many of my friends finds it cool when I share links via that domain. The links are indeed easy to remember but it comes at a higher yearly cost of renewal and I had forgotten to renew twice. Luckily, I was able to re-register them (nobody wants it, ;-)). Example https://oin.am/rr/

My name’s Corlin and I own corl.in I sign up for accounts with emails like apple@corl.in and that lets me easily filter and organize my inbox. But when I have to tell some customer service rep my email they get very confused.

Protip: from.apple@corl.in

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#166

Post by yencabulator »

tln wrote: post #125
taubek wrote: post #23

How many people type the whole URL and how many access it over Google, QR code, or from other site? This is good if content is unique. I find URLs with dates useful when I want to quickly assess how fresh is the content.

QR codes benefit from shorter URLs too!

QR codes are by definition unreadable, so for those you can use example.com/s/ or such.

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#167

Post by sysadm1n »

kevincox wrote: post #146
sysadm1n wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also specify the corresponding short URL of a page with a META tag: Just because it's not a standard doesn't mean you can't use it. This is sort of futureproofing incase it does become a standard.

I don't care if it is a "standard" but it would be nice if people agreed on something. Is the meta version being used anywhere? It looks what I described is very existing to the spec published here: https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-shortlink

Only learning about this now. Thanks for pointing it out. I remember seeing this in the source of some blogs, great to know the exact snippet of code I should be using.

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#168

Post by eyelidlessness »

DoctorOW wrote: post #68
eyelidlessness wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvote all you want and enjoy your craft URLs, may they all be safe for aol of you.

The downvotes are because sive.rs is not a URL shortner. It's the blog this post (both the one you're quoting, and the link within) is written on. It's advocating for shorter permalinks.

Oh so I got downvoted for the thing I already said I disagree with. Cool. Thanks for the explanation I guess?

Re: Short URLs: Why and How

#170

Post by whemy »

corlinpalmer wrote: post #41
Brajeshwar wrote: post #2

I own a 3-letter domain with a 2-letter TLD and still spells my family name. Many of my friends finds it cool when I share links via that domain. The links are indeed easy to remember but it comes at a higher yearly cost of renewal and I had forgotten to renew twice. Luckily, I was able to re-register them (nobody wants it, ;-)). Example https://oin.am/rr/

My name’s Corlin and I own corl.in I sign up for accounts with emails like apple@corl.in and that lets me easily filter and organize my inbox. But when I have to tell some customer service rep my email they get very confused.

I do that as well, my domain is my last name .fr

When changing ISP, I gave ispname@myname.fr and the dude got confused and couldn't understand. He wanted to call his supervisor to ask if I was allowed to do that.

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