URL Design

Lesser of two evils

[thing3b]

I am writing the design plans for my new site, but have come up with questions at the very start, starting with my url design.

(Note: this is the design of static/cached site)

The aim of the site is a intranet portal layed out as a directory similar to DMOZ. So I looked at the URLs on DMOZ... Here is one:

SomeDmozRipOffIntranet.org/Computers/Internet/
Web_Design_and_Development/Promotion/
Search_Engine_Optimization_Firms/

(Note I broke it over 3 lines)

The problem is that on the end of that url I want a file name like:

SomeDmozRipOffIntranet.org/Computers/Internet/
Web_Design_and_Development/Promotion/
Search_Engine_Optimization_Firms/often_accessed_file.pdf

What should be done to the url design in this case?
Should the Directory keep it's long URLs, but have the directory pages link to short file names for the pdf files (and others) like:

SomeDmozRipOffIntranet.org/PDF_Files/often_accessed_file.pdf

The problem like this is that if all the pdf files are in one directory, there may be performance issues with the number of files we are dealing with.

Does anyone have a better method that:
- Allows the user short / easy to remember / urls for resources (for example PDF files)
- Does not lump all files into one directory and cause performance issues.

[fish_eye]

- Allows the user short / easy to remember / urls for resources (for example PDF files)

In my experience most users do not even see the URL and those that do, do not remember URLS (unless it's something like SomeDmozRipOffIntranet.org/help). I know it's an intranet but still....

With that in mind - I'd reevaluate priorities.

Are you hosting on Apache? If so, you have additional choices for naming / storing - that I know of anyway - can't vouch for Windows.