How do sites create short URLs?

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How do sites create short URLs?

All pages in one directory?

wickedmoon

1:32 pm on Mar 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

All the pages on a site example.com are of the format: example.com/page.html. I wondered if they had all the pages in one directory (massive), or whether there might be a script to hide the true URL, so they could use short URLs for content?

[edited by: trillianjedi at 2:16 pm (utc) on Mar. 26, 2005]
[edit reason] Please see TOS - no URL drops please [/edit]

cmatcme

6:14 pm on Mar 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

WELCOME TO WEBMASTERWORLD AKA WW!

Like framesets you mean.

</head> </html>

and all links on that page inbound or outbound would have target=_top in the anchor tag. This would override the frameset onClicking and also would help to ensure that no-one knew it was framesetted.

They may have also used a url clocking service [google.co.uk]

Is that what you mean?

jorj

9:44 pm on Mar 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

mod_rewrite

ControlEngineer

11:02 pm on Mar 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

I wondered if they had all the pages in one directory (massive)

That is possible too. Some people do it that way. It could create massive headaches for the web master unless he uses software to keep track of the pages. (Still a massive headache, IMHO).

Eterion

12:04 am on Mar 28, 2005 (gmt 0)

I'm one of those people... with the short URLs.
I just put it all in one directory, and yes, I do have a way of sorting the pages. Hmm, I just dont know how to do the long URLs cuz when I tried them, it would just spazz the links out.

ControlEngineer

4:06 am on Mar 29, 2005 (gmt 0)

Actually, if the names make sense, it probably isn't so difficult to simply have a large number of files in one directory. The real headaches are for people who avoid the ".html" at the end by having a large number of directories, each with an "index.html" page. I have seen a few of those. Keeping all those files named index.html streight must be a real pain.