URLs are a public interface
Once a URL exists, other people bookmark it, link to it, and cite it. Changing it later means redirects forever and some loss along the way, which puts URL structure closer to an API contract than to a design decision.
1. Don’t put dates in article paths
A date in the URL makes a still-useful article look stale to anyone reading the link, and it forces an awkward choice when you update the piece. Keep the date in the metadata where it can be refreshed honestly.
2. Don’t encode the category if it might change
Category-in-path is tidy until you reorganise, at which point every URL moves. Flat paths for content that might be recategorised keep that reorganisation free.
Every part of a URL that reflects a decision you might revisit is a redirect waiting to happen.
3. Keep them readable and stable
Short, lowercase, hyphenated, describing the content rather than the marketing angle. A URL a person can read is one they can trust when it appears in a citation — a small but real factor now that links surface inside answers.
4. Decide trailing slashes and casing once
Pick a convention, enforce it with redirects, and make canonical tags agree. Serving the same page at several addresses splits signals and is one of the quiet ways a redesign loses visibility.
When you must change one
Permanent redirect to the closest equivalent, update internal links rather than relying on the redirect, and keep the redirect indefinitely. Redirects are cheap; the traffic that hits a dead URL is not.