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url-rewritingseourl-design

Where to add the ID in a URL?

I’m using friendly URLs, like so:

http://localhost/gallery/photo/this-is-a-url-friendly-photo-caption

On the friendly URL, I need to add the ID of the photo, but looking around, I’ve seen two ways of adding the ID to the friendly URL, pre and post, like so

http://localhost/gallery/photo/this-is-a-url-friendly-photo-caption.529

or

http://localhost/gallery/photo/529/this-is-a-url-friendly-photo-caption

Is there an advantage using one way? Or it’s just a question of preference / personal taste?

Solution

  • A small advantage of having the ID in the second last and the slug in the last path segment (/gallery/photo/529/this-is…):

    In some contexts the URL might get cut off, for example by a line break in plain text emails. If the ID comes before the (usually long) slug, there’s a higher chance that the ID stays intact and the URL can keep functioning (assuming that you redirect to the canonical variant with slug).

    Example

    Your question currently has this URL:

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27343034/seo-friendly-url-where-to-add-the-id

    When it gets cut off like that (= the ID stays intact), it redirects to the canonical variant and the user is happy:

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27343034/seo
    -friendly-url-where-to-add-the-id

    But when it gets cut off like that (= a different ID), the user is not so happy (because the link leads to a different page):

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/273430
    34/seo-friendly-url-where-to-add-the-id