Tighter TypePad URLs

TypePad's post URLs are pretty user-friendly, but you can make them even better by adding one simple step to your posting routine.

The basic structure of a TypePad post URL is as follows:

"your domain"/yyyy/mm/"post name".html

TypePad automagically creates the post name from the first 15 characters of your post title.  (TP ignores dashes and other punctuation characters and inserts underscores for spaces.)

This is usually fine, but sometimes it results in some odd-looking URLs.  A common problem is the trailing underscore:

http://www.edbatista.com/2007/01/conflict_modes_.html

http://www.edbatista.com/2006/10/mcclelland_and_.html

Not a huge problem, but it's a little confusing, and it just looks odd.  The solution is to pick a user-friendly post name of 15 characters or less, and use that as the post title the first time you save the post.  After you've saved it once, you can retitle the post anything you want, but the initial title you used will be retained as the post name in the URL.

For example, I first saved this post with "TypePad URLs" as the title, and then retitled it "Tighter TypePad URLs."  And I first saved "Sage Cohen and Peter Drucker on Rapture and Excellence" as "Cohen Drucker."  The resulting URL:

http://www.edbatista.com/2007/03/cohen_drucker.html

Not a huge difference, but it's just a little more elegant and user-friendly.

Comments

[Steve Roesler]

Ed,

This little post is quite practical and much appreciated.

However, the "nostalgic me" became fixated on Archie Bell and the Drells and now I'm in the iTunes library searching for Tighten Up.

Thanks,

Steve