Web Design/URL format

URLs make resources such as online posts addressable, allowing people to bookmark and share content. Like titles, they can facilitate finding resources again.

Social media platforms use various URL formats. Some include the posting account's name while others only contain an ID. Blogging platforms' URL format may contain a year and a month number.

Case studies

YouTube (/watch?v=[ID]) and Instagram (/p/[ID]) only use the post ID, whereas Twitter puts user name ahead of ID (/[username]/status/[ID]).

The Question & Answer site Quora just uses question titles with words separated by dashes and without numerical IDs, whereas sites of the StackExchange network (e.g. SuperUser, AskUbuntu, StackOverflow) use numerical IDs followed by keywords from the question title as URL slug which can be changed without breaking the link.

Internet forum software typically allows linking to subforums, threads (or "topics"), and individual posts through a numerical identifier. Threads' pages may be linked with page numbers or post count offsets. Links to individual posts may show the individiual post, or the post within a thread for context. The default URL may contain redundant parameters with numerical identifiers for subforum, thread, and post ID, to allow falling back in that order should an item be unavailable.