How do you style URLs for print?

I hate setting URls in print, like you say they just look ugly and would anyone really be bothered to type in that URL? I tend to just start http://www. (no http) but really I don’t know what the answer is. I can’t imagine anyone I work for wanting to use a tiny URL.

That’s a really good question.

I wouldn’t be too happy about using the TinyURL stuff on print for clients either although I see it all the time in magazines like .net . There’s another service called Dwarfurls but that produces the same problem, the important domain name goes missing.

The other thing is, when I see those really long URLs in some kind of printed work, I know I would never bother typing them in unless I was REALLY interested, whereas I probably would lash in a tinyurl. Hmmm, bit of a Catch 22. I’ll be really interested to hear what everyone else says on this.

I think the problem (and conversely, the solution) starts earlier than the printed page. The problem is with the state of certain URLs. We are seeing a change, a shift, toward clean, friendly URLs, but it will be some time before the big boys are making these adjustments.

For example, if I wanted to point you in the direction of a particular plan at Verizon, I would be spitting out a string of 40+ characters, most of which a garbled dynamic mess, and impossible to put into print. But if I wanted to reference a 37signals plan, say for Basecamp, you’re looking at http://www.basecamphq.com/signup.

I do agree that there is something missing when it comes to the web meeting the printed page. I can feel big steps forward over the horizon in that area. But for the moment, I think the heart of the problem is usable and friendly URLs, which mean a lot more than some companies believe they do.

Like Tara, I use www, and if there’s a sub-domain (which I can’t remember actually dealing with) I’d probably add the http.

You pose a good question, Aaron. I’d be very hesitant to go through TinyURL for brand reasons, though I can understand why the Guardian have done it.

The other problem with Tiny URL is that they expire!

I think the solution lies before the printed pieces, too, like Ryan said. Perhaps you can work with clients to produce a single page Landing Page (like for sales marketing). It doesn’t have to be quite as strict as many would suggest for a sales pitch (no navigation, single column, etc) but perhaps it would be a good idea to create a page, even if it is a duplicate, and bring it to the top level of the website for easy access. No other pages need link to it, but it will act just like the one buried 10 levels down. Then you would be able to publish: http://www.sci-soc.com/technology.htm. You would need to modify the links, of course, to link to the proper pages in the different directories.

And if the site is database driven, here’s a hint: pull up the desired page in a browser. Go to View>Source and then copy the text into an html file. You’ll just have to remember you did that when you update your various links!

OOooo! Or maybe you use a bogus blank page and put a redirect on it to the longer URI. I bet THAT would be your best solution! YES!

What do you think?

Shoulda checked before I said something about the TinyURL expiring. I think they used to, but they don’t anymore :}

Well… if everything is structured a certain way, it would probably be difficult to rearrange it because websites use relative links (perhaps even more so because that particular website is DB driven?). It is rather difficult to change a website structure once it’s in place, especially if the website is substantial. Plus, then you have the problem of link rot, all the people who have linked to you and now the links don’t work, and then all the previously published materials will be incorrect, too! Anyway…

Aaron, that is a brilliant idea! I think it would work! And instead of a crazy jumble of letters and numbers, perhaps the company could specify a page name, like http://www.domain.com/page.html

A “bogus” page, as I was originally thinking of it, shouldn’t really involve much work for the techies. They just need to set up a 301 permanent redirect on it to point it to the “real” URI. They might balk at this, though, because it is a technique often used by spammers to hide their real URI. I wonder if that’s what TinyURL does, a 301 redirect. It would be interesting if we could find out.

Let us know if this works out!

What’s the point of making bogus pages like that though, if you stick to just one okay, it might hold some sense. But bigger companies tend to link to a lot of pages in the press and whatever, not a single page. So you’ll end up with about as many bogus pages as the amount of pages the site actually holds with valid information. Simply put, you could just as well directly place the pages in a more simple structure to begin with.

The issue brought up already though is that it’s a problem of techies vs marketers in reality, they both have a completely different view of what is considered to be “easy”.

Now as nice as tinyurl is to make url’s shorter it doesn’t get less techie. There’s no way you can bring on the article to another person by verbal communication and include the url without looking at the article since the scrambling makes no sense. Whilst if some sort of logical url naming was used that’d be less of an issue.

Not to mention the loss of name by having tinyurl.com there rather than owndomain.com.