[WEB4LIB] Deep Linking

[Thomas Dowling]

At 01:49 PM 3/6/2002, Yvonne Reynolds wrote:
>One disadvantage of deep linking which the AlertBox article does not 
>mention, is that one is locked into a  site design.  If you redesign your 
>site and move pages- all those deep links are not going to work and you 
>will have a lot of unhappy people thinking your site has closed down.

First, site redesign does not equate to changing URLs and breaking 
links.  If it does, though, there are good rules for how to move URLs in 
the friendliest way possible.  Remember, you're not just hosing the links 
from some other site, but also any users' bookmarks, links from search 
engines, and so forth.  I stand by my assertion that it takes 24 months to 
move a URL smoothly.  If you're scrambling your site more often than 
that...well, you shouldn't be.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu