Here is a cheap but useful trick for you WordPress bloggers- don’t sap your readers with 10 mile long URLs.
If you use the Permalink option to publish your posts based on the date, time, generally it turns a long title blog post like above into something horrible like:
http://cogdogblog.com/2007/02/14/pimp-up-your-wordpress-guru
-status-trimming-those-long-title-posts-with-slugs
That is butt ugly and pretty much says to anyone with some slightly advanced WP skills… “I am a n00b”.
All it takes is to create a shorter link portion is an edit in the Post Slug box, one or two words that capture the essence of the post and voila! A tidier URL, in this case, http://cogdogblog.com/2007/02/14/slugs
There, you can now help reduce the amount of bandwidth consumed by the web, by reducing the transmission of extraneous text characters. Make your URLs shorter today!
I just got a question about slugs the other day. I blush to admit I’d never given this issue any thought. But I can larn! Thanks.
Oh,and L33t rules.
Thanks for the slugs-tip. I just started a blog @ hogpen.blogspot.com. Still working with it. It might take awhile. But I want to know more about the internet conference your setting up, the whens and hows of it.
I’m so vain, I think that post is about me. Thanks for the tip 🙂
Will start using it right away!
Hogpen- info on the NMC conference is at:
http://www.nmc.org/events/2007spring_online_conf/
The conference is hosted in a Learningtimes community (http://www.learningtime.net); presentations are done live with audio, slides, and participants chat in an Elluminate classroom.
Daniel– I was not targeting at all 😉 If I was any good, I’d write a plugin that makes shorter slugs.
Unfortunately, you also reduce your keyword power in Google with your new permalink. I’m not on my first trip around the block. I’ve done plenty of working inside the WordPress engine, including the slug portions.
I’ve got mine set to full titles *on purpose* based on the tangible evidence I have for what it did for my Google page ranking.
Now, one can argue back and forth as to whether that’s worth it or not, but it’s not necessarily an indicator of “noob” status that someone chooses to use full titles as part of the permalink setup.
Point taken, J… perhaps. I should not have cast the n00b assertion, as you assert there is a value to long urls.
But that too hinges if one’s sole purpose is to seek higher Google Rank, something which has never been a goal or a motivation here. And I have nothing to really judge in terms if a long URL with the same keywords as in the long TITLE tag (which my posts still maintain) are a google rank booster. Maybe they are. Isn;t the recipe a secret locked away with the one for extra crispy chicken and Coca-cola?
But I do appreciate the counter-perspective, so readers, feel free to make long urls or short ones without a tag of being a blogging newly come.