[wp-hackers] Some Thoughts/Enhancement Ideas In And Around TheCategory Side Of Things

[Otto]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 7:16 PM, Mark McWilliams <admin at wpkid.com> wrote:
> At the end of the day, WHAT EXACTLY does /category/ do? Please to tell me
> Otto ... cause if you visit that link on your site, it'll show a 404 error
> page, I mean come on, what's all that about? Understanding Custom Taxonomies
> a little more now though, I couldn't give a toss about having ''category''
> in the URL, but that in itself will still lead me to oh, wait a minute, yet
> another 404 error page! :( Not looking too good is it? ANY example ...
> /people/ /school/ /speaker/ /event/ ... all does the same thing! (And if you
> think I was having a go, I'm not, just trying to put a point across!)
>
> But I'm glad you found me funny! :)

Okay, reading through the thread, I see that you are making a false
assumption by assuming that /category has meaning by itself or show go
to something other than a 404 page. I find this almost as amusing, if
only it wasn't so misguided.

URIs are not path structures. They are distinct identifiers. They do
not inherently have hierarchy. The URI of /category/whatever is not
some kind of subclass of /category, and just because
/category/whatever works doesn't mean /category is a legitimate URI.

In other words, the fact that /category throws a 404 is because there
is no /category. It also doesn't matter one little bit because nowhere
on my site or anywhere else on the web will you find a link to
/category by itself. Google will never go to /category because *nobody
links to it*.

URI paths are distinct. They are whole. You don't slice and dice them
as if they were some kind of series of independent things. They can
*look* like a hierarchy, and they can be *mapped* to a hierarchy. But
/category/whatever is a single whole entity, not a series of two
entities strung together.

-Otto
Sent from Memphis, TN, United States