Considering the Impact and Response Strategy for URL Refactoring
This article introduces the potential impact areas I’ve listed when performing URL refactoring.
Suppose you want to refactor the URL
to
changing from item to items.
I’ve listed below the potential impact areas for performing this refactoring.
? We’re not discussing here whether modifications that change URLs should be called ‘refactoring’ or not.
When performing URL refactoring, you need to be mindful of URLs linked from:
Changing URLs without consideration will create dead links.
It also affects metrics in access analysis services like Google Analytics. If you’re aggregating access logs, you’ll need to update those aggregation programs as well.
First, let’s consider the cost-effectiveness of this refactoring.
Compare what you gain versus what you lose by changing from singular to plural form, adding an ‘s’, and if you gain more, then proceed with refactoring.
However, changing URLs carelessly just because “having an ‘s’ is correct” or based solely on engineer ego can create major bugs where the original URLs become inaccessible.
I think it’s good to respond with this two-step approach.
That’s all from the Gemba on absolutely wanting to avoid dead links or broken functionality due to URL refactoring.