What are pros to use extension-less url?

Question

What are pros to use extension-less url? in any terms.

like

http://yoursite.com/mypage.html

http://yoursite.com/mypage.php

http://yoursite.com/mypage.aspx

to

http://yoursite.com/mypage

and is it possible to have extension-less url for every page?

Update:

Is extension less url better for site security?

Answer 1

Only thing I can think of is to make it easier for the end user to remember/type, other than that I don't see any reason, I also ran this by our admin and he says some say SEO but if he was to use it, he would use it for a level if security.

Answer 2

It's mostly done for aesthetic purposes.

There is a very minor potential security benefit (a user doesn't immediately know what language the backend code is written in) but this is negligible.

A related blog post: http://shiflett.org/blog/2008/mar/urls-can-be-beautiful

Answer 3

As stated, one of the advantages is that you do not tie URLS to a specific technology or language. Also, one of the advantages is that it allows you to manage the output format from within the application if you wish to do so.

But this is relevant only within a "routed" code framework, where you would basically attach url routes to code.

For instance, in my code library, you can specify the allowed output format of an url by

1) Setting an Accept header in the HTTP header 2) Attaching a valid extension to the URL

So the code for /my/simple/url.html, /my/simple/url.xml and /my/simple/url.json is exactly the same. The ouput manager will be responsible for outputing the content in the proper way.

So if you change the underlying technology, you are still able to keep the same URL pattern within the new version of you application.

From there, since you are parsing the URL withing your own code to extract the data, it generally gives you the opportunity to make SEO-friendly URL, i.e. more meaningful URLs in terms of search engine indexing. You can then define more meaningful URL patterns within you web application structure.

Answer 4

Because user does not need to know technology behind a page. Example: domain.com/Programs/Notepad

Answer 5

People claim it makes for better SEO, even if I am not personally convinced of that. Many clients request these extension-less URLs nowadays, so it's just as well that it can be easily achieved.

If you are running IIS 7, you can switch the AppPool to run on the Integrated Pipeline, thereby removing the need to have specific extensions mapped to the ASP.NET engine. Once that is done, you can instruct Sitecore to use extension-less urls in the web.config setting (assuming Sitecore 6):

    <linkManager defaultProvider="sitecore">
  <providers>
    <clear />
    <add name="sitecore" type="Sitecore.Links.LinkProvider, Sitecore.Kernel" 
         addAspxExtension="false"    /* This one is set to true, per default */
         alwaysIncludeServerUrl="false" 
         encodeNames="true" 
         languageEmbedding="asNeeded" 
         languageLocation="filePath" 
         shortenUrls="true" 
         useDisplayName="false" />
  </providers>
</linkManager>

And you're set.

Be aware that early versions of Sitecore 6 had a few issues when running Integrated Pipeline. More information can be found here: http://www.cassidy.dk/blog/sitecore/2009/02/session-state-and-integrated-pipeline.html