How to manage URL's?

manage URL's

[jarle]

Hi there,

I came across this web site during my research about "how to manage URL's", and was wondering if anyone of you could point me towards sites discussion the subject. In a nutshell I am in the need for evaluating possible ways of managing URL's, the pro's and con's, why should we Manage URL's, etc.

Any pointers and/or information would be appriciated.

Thanks.

[Macguru]

Hi jarle,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld. Restricting Google searches to this site only [google.com] is a good way to search for some topic burried in here.

Hope this helps...

[ritualcoffee]

do mean managing urls in terms of content?

If so, seach on content management.

[jarle]

Thanks - the google search for the site is very useful.
It pointed me towards a few "more reasons" why I need to put in place procedure/service for managing URLs ..:-)

My initial reason was to avoid broken links. We're talking about a substantial number of possible links, and I was wondering if there was anyone using a database type of approach managing URLs. The issue of Content Management will be looked into within a bigger scope. Maybe my problem of broken links will be solved there.

Thanks - and if anyone has any more information on how to deal/solve such issue, I'd be happy to listen.

[edited by: engine at 9:54 am (utc) on Aug. 22, 2003]
[edit reason] formatting [/edit]

[mattur]

A CMS or offline database-driven solution can manage all your pages and, by association, the URLs.

Another way of tracking broken links is by checking the logs for 404 errors. The advantage of using this method is that you can track broken links from other websites. Even using a CMS you will prob. still want to monitor 404s.

A site I worked on had an incoming link that had been mispelled - a simple redirect fixed the problem immediately, while waiting for the webmaster concerned to fix the link!

[Macguru]

Hi again jarle,

I usually do promotion for smaller sites, and dont have to 'manage' big ones, so I never had to deal with this problem. I usually use Xenu (free utility) to track 404s. You can save the list in DB friendly format for later use. I would try this first.

A CMS can be a big time saver when crews are adding content and they can help you a lot in big site management, but they take some time and efforts to install on existing sites.

I usually see CMS installed on new sites or on ground up rebuilds. They where mostly intended to help non webmasters to add content to a template driven system.

[heini]

Jarle, just for clarification: are you talking about managing/maintaining internal links or external links?

[jarle]

...internal links.
I am trying to come up with (1) approach to best handle internal links, and (2) justify the approach to my management.

[Macguru]

I guess we need a little more details here in order to help. Can you please describe us :

1)The type of site and it's size (portal, directory, corporate, commercial etc.)
2)How many content providers are involved?
3)A general idea on how content is presently added and removed.
4)Technology of site. (dynamic VS static)

I guess those few pointers can bring you more focused leads.

[jarle]

Hi all

We'll be looking into a CMS - which will (hopefully) handle the URL mangment as well. I'd like to thank all of you for help and advice.

Regards
Jarle