The Unchained URL: A Case Against Excessive Structure
There is a mantra in our world of URLs and site architecture that is intoned with near-religious reverence: structure is everything. We are told to be the cartographers of our own digital realms, meticulously planning a hierarchy so logical and intuitive that even a disoriented user—or a simple-minded crawler—could navigate it blindfolded. The homepage begets sections, sections beget categories, and categories beget individual pages, all connected by a carefully pruned lattice of internal links. It’s a beautiful, orderly vision. And I believe it’s a myth that can, ironically, suffocate the very life it seeks to organize.
The problem with this obsession with perfect structure is that it mistakes a website for a static artifact, like a book or a building. We architect with stone, but we are cultivating a garden. Websites are living things. They grow, they change, unexpected topics gain prominence, and old branches wither. The rigid, pre-ordained hierarchy we designed two years ago can quickly become a cage, forcing new, vibrant content into ill-fitting boxes or, worse, preventing its creation altogether because it doesn’t neatly “fit” anywhere in the plan.
Consider the internal link. Common wisdom dictates that links should reinforce this hierarchy, primarily pointing upward to parent categories or laterally to related siblings. But this creates a digital version of a small town where you only ever talk to your immediate neighbors and your landlord. What about the fascinating idea on the other side of the site, in a seemingly unrelated section? To link there is to break the structural rules, to create what a purist might call a “messy” cross-link. Yet, these are often the most valuable connections, the ones that reveal unexpected relationships and keep users engaged in a journey of discovery, not a dutiful march down a pre-laid path.
This structural dogma also leads to URL constipation—the inability to create a simple, direct path to an idea. We end up with URLs like `/blog/2024/07/thoughts/on/a/specific/topic/` when sometimes, all an idea deserves is `/a-specific-topic/`. The former pays homage to a structure that is largely for our own bureaucratic satisfaction; the latter serves the person who has the idea and wants to share it with the world, unburdened by archival formalism. The canonical tag then becomes not a tool for clarity, but a bureaucratic stamp, used to affirm the supremacy of the “correct” structural path over the more natural, human-centric one.
The Argument for a More Organic Web
What I am proposing is not anarchy, but a shift in philosophy: from architect to gardener. A gardener does not force a plant to grow in a specific, rigid shape. They provide fertile soil, water, and light, and then they observe, prune, and guide the organic growth that emerges. Our sites should be treated the same way. Create a foundation, yes, but then be willing to let the content dictate its own connections and its own sense of place.
This means being brave enough to let internal links form a web, not just a tree. It means being comfortable with a URL structure that sometimes prioritizes memorable simplicity over rigid categorization. It means using redirects not just as a cleanup tool for a broken structure, but as a way to honor the many paths users might take to find value, even if those paths weren’t in the original blueprint.
Ultimately, a website’s value lies not in the perfection of its map, but in the richness of its territory. By loosening our grip on excessive structure, we unchain our URLs and our content, allowing for the spontaneous, the unexpected, and the genuinely intuitive to flourish. We stop building museums and start cultivating ecosystems.
Notes & further reading
A few pages I came back to while writing this: