[thelist] remember the old whatis.com?

[Warden, Matt]

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> It's always been unclear to me what the advantage of having ugly
> urls  like that is ... it looks like it could have several ID's in
> it, but  what does it accomplish that you can't accomplish
> otherwise? 
> Especially for a dictionary site, where the term is by nature going
>  to be a unique ID?
> 
> Is it some sort of pre-packaged content management system?

Yes. Vignette probably.

Fwiw, the URL is made up of lots of parts (assuming this is
Vignette):

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893,sid9_gci212307,00.htm
l

"definition" is the template. The actual "file" being requested.

I don't remember what "0" is, but I believe it's an on/off switch
(zero or one). Possibly whether or not to grab it from cache.

"289893" I believe is the template ID

"sid9_gci212307" is an overstuffed object id, much like passing a
querystring of DB ids

"00" is the browser capabilities code

They are damn ugly, though. But, it really wouldn't have been that
hard for them to set up redirects. *shrug*


later,


- --
mattwarden
mattwarden.com

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