On 5/17/2011 8:00 PM, John Vandenberg wrote:
>
> Is there a good reason for us to always include the '/wiki/' in the URL?
> Removing the prefix would save five characters, and I'm guessing that
> it would also save a measurable amount of traffic serving 5KB 404
> pages.
>
> Is there something else on these virtual hosts other than a few
> regexes which are extremely unlikely to be used as page names (i.e.
> \/w\/.*\.php).
I think you should always keep control of your top-level namespace
on a web server, because once you lose control of it you've got no
control. If, someday, Wikipedia wants to add some new URLs, it's
free to do that because they didn't let every Tom, Dick and Harry
pollute the global namespace.
This is particularly important if you want to use third-party
software of some kind. The worst thing you can do is install
Wordpress, Drupal or something like that in a top-level directory,
because then you're stuck. If you install it in a subdirectory, you're
always free to install something else in another subdirectory and use it
in parallel. If you want to switch to a different CMS, you can put it
in a new directory, and then build a 301 redirect machine that keeps
all of your links working.
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
