Extensions Vs Non Extensions

[Whittie]

Hello,

I'm a big fan of clean urls. However i'm curious as to what you guys do, to remove them in a friendly way which doesn't cause confusion.

Standard URLS
http://www.example.com/example1.html
http://www.example.com/example2.html
http://www.example.com/example3.html
http://www.example.com/example4.php
http://www.example.com/example5.php

What looks better (in my eyes)
http://www.example.com/example1/
http://www.example.com/example2/
http://www.example.com/example3/
http://www.example.com/example4/
http://www.example.com/example5/

Do you keep extensions throughout your website, avoiding any sort of confusion and page duplication;

OR

Put a canonical link pointing to the extension-less version of each page, with the anticipation of this version indexing into Google and other Search Engines.

OR

301 Each page which has an extension to an extension-less version, and remove all linking to ".html" site wide causing errors within software like Dreamweaver, but working properly.

OR

Another way? Please emphasise

I'm sorry if this is a little vague and I appreciate any angles on this, I quite like clean url's but unsure a hassle-less way to create it.

Thanks for any advice in advance

[Whittie]

Thanks for your answer on this,

I think this will be the right road to go down.

Alex

[2MSens]

Hi,

Yes, 301s is the best way to get search engine forget about your past URLs.

.html are not good clean urls, so if you can, get rid of them

However, I cannot help you with Dreamweaver issues, I don't use it... Hope someone can help you with it.

Best,

[Whittie]

Thanks Benoit!

I'm wanting to keep the clean urls, so would you say 301s are the best way to combat this? As well as deleting all of the ".html" references within my website? Even though it would throw up errors within Dreamweaver etc?

[2MSens]

Hi,

Good point. As I see it, website visitors do not care about the extension ".something", this is just a development issue. So the best way is to avoid it, as people will remember the URL, not the extension.

Best is to use 301 redirection and keep clean URL, there is no need to keep duplicate pages.

Let me know if that helps

Best,

• Benoit.