{"id":11626,"date":"2009-07-08T22:31:16","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T20:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/blog\/?p=182"},"modified":"2009-07-08T22:31:16","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T20:31:16","slug":"forget-the-url","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/08\/forget-the-url\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget the URL"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just yesterday I was talking with a few people about the Web and how things are changing, and the subject of URLs came up.\u00a0 And I shared my opinion on the matter – URLs don’t matter.\u00a0 Before you start arguing, I want to make it clear that I do understand that there are exceptions to every rule and no assumption stays true forever.\u00a0 But on the other hand, that’s what I believe.<\/p>\n

I think every Web surfer answers this question to himself at certain point in time.\u00a0 Are all these URLs that I visited, searched for, and bookmarked over the years matter?\u00a0 And I suspect that quite a few of those people will answer as I do – “no”.\u00a0 I had a sneaky suspicion for some time, but it was delicious social bookmarks web service that made me confident about this.<\/p>\n

The thing with delicious is that initially it was available at http:\/\/del.icio.us<\/a> .\u00a0 And as you might guess, there quite a few problems with this URL.\u00a0 Firstly, the word “delicious<\/em>” is not in the active vocabulary of most non-native English speakers.\u00a0 Secondly, even those who know the word, have troubles spelling it correctly.\u00a0 Thirdly, those who know how to spell it, never seem to guess where to put the dots.\u00a0 And fourthly, the logical line between the meaning of the word “delicious” and a social bookmarking web site is vague at best.<\/p>\n

However, that didn’t stop del.icio.us from becoming the most popular social bookmarking web site on the Web.\u00a0 And that was when I became confident in that the URLs don’t matter any more.\u00a0 Very few people will remember them.\u00a0 Most people will find the site with the help of a search engine.\u00a0 And those who are really interested in getting back to it, will bookmark it.\u00a0 It’s that simple.<\/p>\n

What about brand names, you ask?\u00a0 Brand names are important.\u00a0 But you can avoid linking brand names to URLs.\u00a0 What about people’s names?\u00a0 Only a few will remember them.\u00a0 What about original, non-standard domain names?\u00a0 Only few of those will be remembered, the rest will search and bookmark.\u00a0 Why do I have mamchenkov.net domain name then?\u00a0 Because it was available and because it links to my name nicely.\u00a0 If it wasn’t there, I’d use something else.\u00a0 And, in fact, I did use a couple of other domains before I registered mamchenkov.net .<\/p>\n

Why all of a sudden I started talking about it?\u00a0 Because today I came across someone else saying practically the same thing – “Do URLs matter anymore?<\/a>” article over at CNET News, and I quote:<\/p>\n

People still try to trade the most simple URLs for hopeful hundreds of thousands. They will still line up in the hope of getting a vanity URL from Facebook.\u00a0 But don’t most people simply go to the little search box, type in the name of what they’re looking for, and search?\u00a0 If it’s something they want to go back to, they’ll bookmark it. But they won’t remember what the URL is. For the simple reason that they don’t need to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n

Just yesterday I was talking with a few people about the Web and how things are changing, and the subject of URLs came up.\u00a0 And I shared my opinion on the matter – URLs don’t matter.\u00a0 Before you start arguing, I want to make it clear that I do understand that there are exceptions to … Continue reading Forget the URL<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,62],"tags":[1762,1290,1189],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-11626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-technology","tag-domain-names","tag-marketing","tag-web-promotion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15110,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/14\/social-networks-and-referrer-urls\/","url_meta":{"origin":11626,"position":0},"title":"Social networks and referrer URLs","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"June 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Pretty much every social network out there is building a custom front page for each user. \u00a0Such front pages are customized with preferences and previous activity of the user. \u00a0This is an excellent functionality. \u00a0But one thing such approach often breaks is a referral URL. \u00a0Have a look at something\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/facebook_stats-500x71.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":22145,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/07\/browser-support-for-urls-beginning-with-double-slash\/","url_meta":{"origin":11626,"position":1},"title":"Browser support for URLs beginning with double slash","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"July 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"For some reason, I keep forgetting if double slash URLs are supported in older browsers or not. \u00a0Maybe if I post the answer from this StackOverflow\u00a0question here, I will remember it myself next time: This behavior was part of RFC 1808 (Section 4) which is about 16 years old, so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13429,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/24\/shorter-url-longer-url-funny-url\/","url_meta":{"origin":11626,"position":2},"title":"Shorter URL? Longer URL? Funny URL?","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"September 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This Slashdot discussion got me started. \u00a0The discussion is about URL shortening services and their impact on the Web. \u00a0Needless to say, most people who care about the Web, hate all kinds of third-party URL manipulations with a passion. \u00a0 The reasons are numerous, and here are two that annoy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":22700,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2014\/10\/22\/url-rewriting-in-built-in-web-server-of-php\/","url_meta":{"origin":11626,"position":3},"title":"URL rewriting in built-in web server of PHP","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"October 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"PHP comes with a handy for development built-in web server. \u00a0However, most web projects have friendly URLs these days which are either Apache (mod_rewrite) or Nginx specific configuration. \u00a0This almost renders built-in PHP web server useless. \u00a0Unless you provide a PHP-based routing, like so: Start the PHP web server with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26262,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2016\/07\/19\/the-history-of-the-url\/","url_meta":{"origin":11626,"position":4},"title":"The History of the URL","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"July 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The History of the URL is a brilliant compilation of ideas and resources, explaining how we got to the URLs we use and love (or hate) today. \u00a0In fact, the article comes in two parts: Domain, protocol, and port Path, fragment, query, and auth Read them in whatever order you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8610,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2005\/02\/10\/webby_m3u\/","url_meta":{"origin":11626,"position":5},"title":"webby_m3u","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"February 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I have found a really nice way to listen to my home mp3s at work. All I needed to do is share my music directory via web and generate an m3u playlist with URLs to files. m3u playlist than could be downloaded and fed to XMMS, where I could\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11626"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyring_services?post=11626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}