Re: URL aliases for WPD without /wiki

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Lea Verou <lea@w3.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I’m not sure if I’m in the minority, but I often type WPD URLs by hand, so
> typing the /wiki part every time is tedious. I was wondering if we could
> set up redirects for the top level paths (e.g. /css, /html, /svg etc) which
> redirect to the URL with the /wiki part so that for example [1] becomes [2].
>
> Doug likes the idea but is concerned about potential SEO implications. I
> think that if we do it with 301 redirects it will be fine for SEO, but I
> might be wrong (?).
> Denis, is it possible? I think it could be done with a few rules in the
> .htaccess, perhaps without even having to explicitly list all the top level
> categories (i.e. test if the path starts with /wiki and if not, add it).
> Everyone else, do you think it's a good idea?
>
>
This shouldn't hurt SEO. Assuming this structure won't change much in the
future, it seems sane. Changes in the structure could harm SEO if we're
unable to properly map the redirects to the new structure (dead links are
bad). The rewrite rules for this should be easy-ish.

- Ryan