Bengals.com links are breaking; not our fault

by Josh Kirkendall on May 7, 2009 11:17 AM EDT

Since Bengals.com re-launched, we've noticed a serious issue with their site. Anytime that we link one of their stories, within a few days, that links turns into a page that reads "The Article may have expired or has been deleted." Going through our posts, over a day old, we're seeing that the URL is actually being changed once the article is updated.

For example, when reports surfaced that Roy Williams signed with the Bengals, the URL was "http://www.bengals.com/news/article-1/agent-bengals-agree-with-roy/25e6fe92-e7ff-4c7e-ae4a-e61a1d5c8249"

When those reports were confirmed, the URL went to "http://www.bengals.com/news/article-1/roy-in-bengaldom/25e6fe92-e7ff-4c7e-ae4a-e61a1d5c8249"

When the Bengals cut Levi Jones, the URL was: "http://www.bengals.com/news/article-1/bengals-cut-levi-jones/1f96408c-f467-4926-a96d-010172613abc".

When quotes were added and the piece's headline changed to "Levi: No bitterness", the URL changed to "http://www.bengals.com/news/article-1/levi-no-bitterness/1f96408c-f467-4926-a96d-010172613abc"

The bold is where the URL actually changes. I'm not ripping on the team's site, but when you click on a link for a story on Bengals.com, and get that message "The Article may have expired or has been deleted", then know we didn't mess that up. The site's URL changed. And honestly, we don't have the time, nor the the patience, to go back to and change every URL when the story changes.

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Comments

I can explain why that is, but you’d have to understand programming.

Short version (and for non-programmers) is somebody didn’t think things through very well.

Slightly longer version for those who care, the link isn’t actually a real page. It’s a virtual link. Every single page on that site likely triggers off the following actual URL “www.bengals.com/index.[php/asp/aspx/cfm/etc]”. Everything after that point is parameters being passed in and processed to determine A) what handler to load (in this case “news handler”), B) what action to take (in this case “display article in 1-column format”), and C) which article to load, which identifier comes in two parts. And that was their mistake. They shouldn’t have put the article title as part of the virtual URL. Had they not done that links would remain valid permanently even when they changed it.

by FriarBob on May 7, 2009 12:45 PM EDT reply actions