When should a trailing slash be used in a URL? For example - should my URL look like /about-us/
or like /about-us
?
I am fully aware of the SEO-related issues - duplicate content and the canonical thing; I'm trying to figure out which one I should use in the context of serving pages correctly alone.
For example, my colleague is thinking that a trailing slash at the end means it's a "folder" - a "directory", so this is not a correct style. But I think that without a slash in the end - it's not quite correct either, because it almost looks like a folder, but it isn't and it's not a normal file either, but a filename without extension.
Is there a proper way of knowing which to use?
It is not a question of preference. /base
and /base/
have different semantics. In many cases, the difference is unimportant. But it is important when there are relative URLs.
child
relative to /base/
is /base/child
.child
relative to /base
is (perhaps surprisingly) /child
.