.htaccess URLs: Use File Extension?

Question

When using .htaccess to redefine the URLs for a site, there are two clear options:

1. Provide no extension, as StackOverflow has done with URLs like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask
2. Provide the extension of .html, regardless of the underlying technology, so something like http://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask.html

Are there any specific advantages to using one approach over the other?

Edit: Here is the article that made me consider using .html to fake a static implementation.

Answer 1

I think it depends on how much SEO friendly you want to make your site.

Consider this: today you have a vanilla ask.html static page. Tomorrow you might want to make it dynamic and replace it by ask.php which can take parameters. Having a site url change is not good from the SEO point of view. If ask.html is already popular and ranks near top on a google search, you will hate to change that. In these cases, having a permanent alias url (permalink) like /ask via .htaccess from the beginning will make more sense.

On the other hand, if you have a very high traffic static html page, then maybe page load can be a little faster if .htaccess is bypassed by having an url that directly references the file.

Answer 2

So far, the only factors I've been able to come up with are:

1. Out-dated SEO factor: As mentioned in the article I linked, search engines used to give more credit to pages with a static file extension. This no longer appears to be the case.
2. Subjective Aesthetic factor: In my opinion, the shorter (extension-free) listing looks more attractive, and requires users to type fewer character if they were ever typing your URL (or to use fewer characters anywhere they happen to paste your URL). I guess this could result in more link sharing by making it easier to link directly to your stuff on services like Twitter.

Answer 3

The first URL can be considered as a generic URL in contrast to the second URL that can be considered as a specific URL (specifying HTML as the content type).

Generic URLs are useful when using content negotiation. So /questions/ask can be used to request a resource that depends on client’s preferences (e.g. Accept, Accept-Encoding, and Accept-Language), location (localization), and time. On the other hand /questions/ask.html would be used to request a resource that is definitely HTML.