[wp-testers] Uploading Location and Trailing slash

Roy Schestowitz wp-lowtraffic at schestowitz.com
Mon Dec 19 07:57:07 GMT 2005


_____/ On Mon 19 Dec 2005 06:09:45 GMT, [Aaron Bird] wrote : \_____

>> > http://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/uri-spec.txt
>> >
>> > Have a look at Section 8:
>> >
>> > <snippet>
>> >
>> > Note: Trailing slashes
>> >
>> >    If a path of the context locator ends in slash, partial URIs are
>> >    treated differently to the URI with the same path but without a
>> >    trailing slash. The trailing slash indicates a void segment of the
>> >    path.
>> >
>> > </snippet>
>> >
>> > The point made by Berners-Lee is that syntax pertaining to structure
>> need be
>> > avoided. For example, ".." might have a special meaning. What about
>> spaces
>> > ("%20") for example? They lead to a command-line ambiguity (spaces have
>> a
>> > special meaning, also in the context of namespace). They were embraced
>> by
>> > Windows in particular. I'm in favour of no trailing slash, but either
>> > way, they
>> > don't lead to PageRank leakage, unlike, for instance, the www umbilical
>> cord.
>> > It's not crucial and permanent link will not be broken either way.
>> >
>> > Roy
>
> On 12/18/05, Sean Hayford O'Leary <hayfordoleary at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm very anti-"www." too (in spite of my previous www. linkage in this
>> thread, all of the sites I manage are set to remove www.  from their
>> addresses. Once again, just would have been nice to be able to turn it
>> off, certainly not going to prevent me from using WordPress.
>>
>> What does strike me with a great deal more anger at WP is the
>> difficulty in customising the upload path. Could someone please tell
>> me how I can do this now? (Hate to drag up old arguments, but I would
>> point out that people like consistency, and they hardly want to go
>> back and change all of their old image URIs. I'm pro-YYYY/MM, though.
>> Still think it was dorky to remove option from admin ui [especially
>> when we have a colour customiser]).
>>
>> Happy to argue the point, but, again, much more urgently, I want to
>> know how to customise it (I've been having to make thumbnails in
>> Photoshop then FTP). Oh, speaking of which, can the size of default
>> thumbnail be changed?
>
> Yes he is very anti-"www." he hates the "www" do not put it in your links.

If  you  are  referring to that W3C URL, I guess you  are  right.  Educate
search  engines or browsers to help us get rid of it. I recently contacted
Netcraft  because,  unlike Alexa for example, they  treat  www.example.org
differently  from example.org. Their replies (two sent for the same query)
argued in defence of that choice, saying the addresses are unique.

Having  said that, the 'www.' part is frequently a necessity. One site  of
mine,  which  is hosted on BSD, requires the 'www.'. Many sites which  are
driven  by PHP (or equivalent server-side PL) run a function[1] every time
a  page is requested just to ensure removal (or inclusion) of the  'www.',
all  for the sake of consistency. Making the transition, as I attempted to
do several times in the past caused problems. Saved passwords and automat-
ed  re-directions lead to a mess. Someone I know confirmed the undesirable
effect on Wikis and password-protected pages, but there are workarounds.

Roy


[1] Example:

$request = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$server = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];

$prefix = strtolower(substr($server,0,4));
if ($prefix != "www.") {
  # combine page rank
  header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
  header("Location: http://www.$server$request";);
  exit;
}



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