Windows Live Writer and Friendly URLs

03 Oct, 2006.

[Update: This post was written before Community Server 2.1 SP2 was released.  With SP2 and later versions of Community Server, the URLs are automatically formatted all lowercase with no punctuation characters.]

One of my co-workers, Alex Lowe, recently pointed our team to a post on SEOmoz about best practices for URLs.  If you haven't checked it out, I would highly recommend it.  Since Alex recommended this post, I have been more aware of URL formats while I browse the web and work with various applications.

So, using Windows Live Writer to post to my blog (which is powered by Community Server) I wanted to see if there was a way to have more control over the URL that was generated for a post.  As you may know, Community Server already does a pretty good job converting a post title into a URL.  However, if you use certain characters in your title, especially puctuation, it will be encoded to a not so friendly URL... which is expected. 

Let's use the example of a post entitled "Pleats are sexy!".

By default, Community Server would create the following URL:

  • /_2200_Pleats-are-sexy_21002200_.aspx

Now, minus the punctuation, this seems pretty good.  However, if you are creative and are using Windows Live Writer, you can get the following URL instead:

  • /pleats-are-sexy.aspx

Here's how: simply name your post pleats are sexy and publish it as a draft (notice it is all lowercase and no punctuation).  Then, change the title to whatever you like.  A different URL will not be created on subsequent publishings of the same post because Windows Live Writer will only send updates for the title, body, and categories to Community Server.

Look at it as a feature or a bug ... whatever you like ... but I must say, I really like this feature.

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Comments

  • jayson knight said:

    Keyvan and I have discussed this before, and I've even pinged the CS team alias...why aren't punctuation/whitespace/words less than 3 letters stripped out of post titles to make a friendlier URL from within CS? i.e. break the title down to a char[] and then loop through it using the various static Is<foo> methods on the char type? Never did get a solid answer on that, but would seem to make more sense...

    03 Oct, 2006 @ 11:17 PM

  • Dan Hounshell said:

    "Pleats are sexy!" - ROFL - That is beautiful. Nice job.

    04 Oct, 2006 @ 05:00 AM

  • kbeyer said:

    Jayson:

    Thanks for the feedback.  I'm pretty sure the CS team is planning to take another look at URLs moving forward.  You have some good ideas ... and I bet they will be taken into account.

    Dan:

    Yeah - had to throw that in there. :)

    04 Oct, 2006 @ 07:12 AM

  • ASB said:

    That's a good suggestion, Kyle.   I'll have to try that going forward.

    I consider it a feature, btw.  Wouldn't want to have the title changing every time I edited.  :)

    04 Oct, 2006 @ 03:36 PM

  • kbeyer said:

    Thanks Andrew.

    FYI - for all - Bill Robertson (http://wfrobertson.com/) pointed out the custom naming feature in the Community Server advanced blog post options ... for those who use the CS control panel to post.  In addition, he's talking about creating a CS module to auto-name posts more in line with Jayson's suggestions.  No pressure Bill. :)

    05 Oct, 2006 @ 09:57 AM