Re: Thoughts on wpd.mx domain

Well, we don't necessarily need to support it outright. However, people
will do it anyways if they feel it is worth doing. We really need to figure
out if it has an official place and if so where.

For instance, in the IRC bot room #webplatform-bot which announces edits
and new users it is very useful to have the shortened URL for quickly
putting together what page it was on without having the full URL. So, there
are a few niche places it is very useful but outside of those use-cases we
should focus on simply using absolute URLs, which we can also append things
to in order to track campaigns as done through Piwik. I don't think
campaign tracking would work through the wpd.mx domain. So it should never
be used for things we are trying to track the effectiveness of. Which will
really leave using/supporting the wpd.mx scheme as a pure community effort.

All we can really do is use full URLs on anything officially done (which we
should do for the purpose of campaigning). Anything else can use a
shortener like wpd.mx. No real way around it being used.


On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Lea Verou <lea@w3.org> wrote:

> Most people don’t type URLs. Even the ones who do, the browser usually
> autocompletes, so you only need the first few characters. I’d be wary of
> promoting two different URLs for the same website.
>
> Lea Verou
> W3C developer relations
> http://w3.org/people/all#lea ✿ http://lea.verou.me ✿ @leaverou
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> On May 18, 2013, at 02:21, Jonathan Garbee <jonathan@garbee.me> wrote:
>
> We need short URLs because no one wants to type long ones. ;) .mx for the
> TLD does seem odd, but what else is there? .io? I think the people actually
> using the shortened URLs would have no problem remembering it. However I do
> prefer just using goo.gl or bit.ly since they provide stats on usage such
> as hit rates. However, the downside to these is they aren't very memorable.
>
> wpd.mx should tell search engines to not index itself if there are any
> adverse SEO issues, but from the discussion here I don't believe there are
> any.
>
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> On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Lea Verou <lea@w3.org> wrote:
>
>> AFAIK URLs with 301 redirects do get indexed, but the resulting pagerank
>> goes to the page they point to (as Julee pointed out) and the latter is
>> what shows up in Google, so there shouldn’t be any adverse SEO side effects.
>> However, I’m not sure wpd.mx is a good URL (.mx is hard to remember and
>> doesn’t stand for anything WPD-related) and I’m not sure why we we even
>> need short URLs.
>>
>> Just my two cents :)
>>
>>  Lea Verou
>> W3C developer relations
>> http://w3.org/people/all#lea ✿ http://lea.verou.me ✿ @leaverou
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>> On Apr 23, 2013, at 09:59, Patrick D'Souza wrote:
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>>  Hi,
>>
>> It has been brought to my notice that wpd.mx has been setup as a url
>> shortener for webplatform.org urls. for e.g. wpd.mx/apis/canvas 301s to
>> http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/apis/canvas.<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/apis/canvas>
>> This url has been indexed by Google and I don't like the thought of
>> different urls pointing to the same content when a user is searching for
>> canvas in a search engine. It dilutes the positive effects of a
>> webplatform.org url.
>>
>> Sorry to be a little picky but we should avoid all such short urls which
>> confuse a user and in turn result in duplicate content being served to
>> search engines. I see the benefit of a url shortener as it can be useful
>> in social media campaigns as well as brand promotion for webplatform.org.
>> I propose we use this url shortener on webplatform.org itself for e.g.
>> webplatform.org/font-size which would redirect to
>> docs.webplatform.org/css/properties/font-size.  Every 301 is one
>> additional request for a user which is not good in terms of performance. I
>> would appreciate if we avoid 301s as far as possible unless it's absolutely
>> required. Always, keep it simple :)
>>
>> Any thoughts and feedback are much appreciated.
>>
>> - Patrick
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