Cool URLs Do Change (Sometimes)

Required reading: Cool URLs don't -change.

When I wrote Nobody Cares About Your -Build, I -set up a dedicated publishing platform - Wordpress, as it happens - to host -it, and as part of that process I put some real thought into the choice of -“permalink” schemes to use. I opted to use a “dated” scheme, baking the -publication date of each article into its name - into its URL - for all -eternity. I'm a big believer in the idea that a URL should be a long-term name -for the appropriate bit of data or content, and every part of a dated scheme -“made sense” at the time.

This turned out to be a mistake.

The web is not, much, like print media. Something published may be amended; -you don't even have to publish errata or a correction, since you can correct -the original mistake “seamlessly.” This has its good and its -bad parts, but with judicious use -and a public history, amendment -is more of a win than a loss. However, this plays havoc with the idea of a -“publication” date, even for data that takes the form of an article: is the -publication date the date it was first made public, the date of its most -recent edit, or some other date?

Because the name - the URL - of an article was set when I first published it, -the date in the name had to be its initial publication date. This has -actually stopped me from making useful amendments to old articles because the -effort of writing a full, free-standing followup article is more than I'm -willing to commit to. Had I left the date out of the URLs, I'd feel more free -to judiciously amend articles in place and include, in the content, a short -amendment summary.

The W3C's informal suggestions on the subject state that “After the creation -date, putting any information in the name is asking for trouble one way or -another.” I'm starting to believe that this doesn't go far enough: every -part of a URL must have some semantic justification for being there, dates -included:

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Each part must be meaningful. While - http://example.com/WW91IGp1c3QgbG9zdCB0aGUgZ2FtZQ== is fairly easy to - render stable, the meaningless blob renders the name immemorable.
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Each part must be stable. This is where I screwed up worst: I did not - anticipate that the “date” of an article could be a fluid thing. It's - tempting to privilege the first date, and it's not an unreasonable - solution, but it didn't fit how I wanted to address the contents of - articles.
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Running a web server gives you one namespace to play with. Use it wisely.

Ok, But I've Already Got These URLs

Thankfully, there's a way out - for some URLs. URLs inherently name -resources accessed using some protocol, and some protocols provide support -for resources that are, themselves, references to other URLs. HTTP is a good -example, providing a fairly rich set of responses that all, fundamentally, -tell a client to check a second URL for the content relevent to a given URL. -In protocols like this, you can easily replace the content of a URL with a -reference to its new, “better” URL rather than abandoning it entirely.

Names can evolve organically as the humans that issue them grow a better -understanding of the problem, and don't always have to be locked in stone from -the moment they're first used.

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