Tweaking navigation labelling

I���ve always liked the idea that your website can be your API. Like, you���ve already got URLs to identify resources, so why not make that URL structure predictable and those resources parsable?

That���s why the (read-only) API for The Session doesn���t live at a separate subdomain. It uses the same URL structure as the regular site, but you can request the resources in an alternative format: JSON, XML, RSS.

This works out pretty well, mostly because I put a lot of thought into the URL structure of the site. I���m something of a URL fetishist, but I think that taking a URL-first approach to information architecture can be a good exercise.

Most of the resources on The Session involve nouns like tunes, events, discussions, and so on. There���s a consistent and predictable structure to the URLs for those sections:

/things/things/new/things/search

And then an idividual item can be found at:

things/ID

That���s all nice and predictable and the naming of the URLs matches what you���d expect to find:

tunestunes/newtunes/search?q=Irelandtunes/320

Tunes, events, discussions, sessions. Those are all fine. But there���s one section of the site that has this root URL:

/recordings

When I was coming up with the URL structure twenty years ago, it was clear what you���d find there: track listings for albums of music. No one would���ve expected to find actual recordings of music available to listen to on-demand. The bandwidth constraints and technical limitations of the time made that clear.

Two decades on, the situation has changed. Now someone new to the site might well expect to hit a link called ���recordings��� and expect to hear actual recordings of music.

So I should probably change the label on the link. I don���t think ���albums��� is quite right���what even is an album any more? The word ���discography��� is probably the most appropriate label.

Here���s my dilemma: if I update the label, should I also update the URL structure?

Right now, the section of the site with /tunes URLs is labelled ���tunes���. The section of the site with /events URLs is labelled ���events���. Currently the section of the site with /recordings URLs is labelled ���recordings���, but may soon be labelled ���discography���.

If you click on ���tunes���, you end up at /tunes. But if you click on ���discography���, you end up at /recordings.

Is that okay? Am I the only one that would be bothered by that?

I could update the URLs to match the labelling (with redirects for the old URLs, of course), but I���m not so keen on this URL structure:

/discography/discography/new/discography/search/discography/ID

It doesn���t seem as tidy as:

/recordings/recordings/new/recordings/search/recordings/ID

But if I don���t update the URLs to match the label, then I���m just going to have to live with the mismatch.

I���m just thinking out loud here. I think I should definitely update the label. I just won���t make any decision on changing URLs for a while yet.