NATHAN ASHBY-KUHLMAN > Blog Entry

Article URLs week: Day 4

It’s the fourth day of Article URLs week, and today we’re looking at URLs at some of the top news sites. Largely, they do a better job than other sites we’ve seen:

Tomorrow will be the final day of reviewing individual site’s URLs. Saturday we’ll wrap up with conclusions.

Comment by Jason, posted August 1, 2003, 12:31 am

if i may, submitted for your disapproval is the Toronto Star, the largest paper in Canada. a sample:
http://torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?
GXHC_gx_session_id_=bdcda2ebdf22a959&pagename=
thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=
1059689420236&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

(Massive cleanup follows "successful" concert)

Comment by Jason, posted August 1, 2003, 12:33 am

I apologize if the long url breaks your layout in any way. Sorry.

Comment by Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman, posted August 1, 2003, 2:49 am

Jason, I fixed the layout. That URL is utterly awful — even more utterly awful than the worst ones I’ve already pointed out. Using some kind of session ID in the URL is just disgusting. At least the server does seem to still give you the article if the session has expired, though — one tiny piece of forethought in a stupid design that definitely deserves an F.

Comment by Wes McGee, posted August 3, 2003, 6:13 pm

Actually, concerning the Wash Post, it's not as clear cut as it appears. A number of 'special articles' get section treatment in its URLs. Movie Reviews follow this format http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/style/movies/reviews/A8091-2003Jul31.html, which can back track you to a list of recent reviews (/style/movies/reviews) or simply the Style section (/style) or this article on Metrobus being found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/metro/specials/metrorail/A15307-2003Aug2. (Yep, you can omit the '.html', but only if you place an /ac2/' between the domain name and the filepath.

For whatever reason, whenever they post links for you to follow from the website itself, it prefers the all purpose wp-dyn/article/. Probably because it's shorter. If you notice in the last link I gave you, the Post started putting pointers as to how to make these secret links.

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This page last modified on Sunday, January 15, 2006 at 8:58 pm