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To quote W3C, “Cool URIs don’t change”

W3C is known as the World Wide Consortium and is mainly responsible for creating web standards and guidelines. According to W3C, “Cool URIs don’t change.” Their belief is that if you have already chosen a URI then there is no reason why you should change the URI. This is in theory although there could be hundreds of reasons in practice.

According to W3C, the URI theory is that you as a domain name space owner will not only own the domain name space but also all URIs in it. The only time you as the domain space owner can change the URI is during insolvency. Theoretically speaking, the URI space that is there within your domain name is always in your control and that is why you will be able to ensure its stability pretty much as you want it. Most of the times, a webpage or a document is understood to disappear from the web only if a domain name has expired or the company is no more in business. So the question is: why do people then want to change their cool URI’s? Here are some common reasons:

•    Re-organized the website
•    Changing from a CGI Script to a binary program
•    The support of the fact that URN’s will fix the problem of persistent namespace
•    Not having the right tools

There are many more similar reasons that people use to change their cool URI’s but it is not recommended. Now the question is: what information can’t be or should not be changed once you have your own domain space? The answer is: everything! Once the URI has been created, you shouldn’t add any information as it might lead to trouble. Here are some of the aspects that you can look at:

1.    Author’s name: With arrival of new versions, authorship can be changed. This happens when people leave an organization.
2.    Subject: Changing the subject is a tricky thing.
3.    Status: You will notice that some of the directories like draft and old or even cool and latest will appear in the file systems. The important thing to understand is that whatever the status of a document, the latest version will definitely require a persistent identifier. It is important to keep the status of the document out of the name.
4.    Access: According to W3C, they have divided a site into three types of accesses and they are member access, team access, and public access. Most documents always start off as a team idea, then they are discussed with other members, and finally they are disclosed to the public.
5.    File name extension: This is probably the most common aspect. According to W3C, in the near future there might not be any HTML or even CGI. In such a scenario, you would still want your current links to be valid.

The most important fact is that it is not as nearly as it sounds to keep the same URI alive for 20 years or even 2000 years but then changing the URI is definitely not the solution.

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By Jeremy Hermanns | November 22, 2008 | Filed Under SEO Advice 

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One Response to “To quote W3C, “Cool URIs don’t change””

  1. randy bragg on December 7th, 2008

    Seems kind of confusing to me….but i will try to figure it out…

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