Case Studies: Yahoo.com and Webreference.com

Now let's take the URL abbreviation technique you learned in Chapter 17, "Server-Side Techniques," and put it to work. As you recall, you can use the mod_rewrite module to automatically expand abbreviated URLs to save space. For pages with lots of links, this can make a big difference in file size . Because your home page is usually the busiest page on your site, it is especially important to ensure that it displays quickly.

Let's look at some real-world examples of sites before and after link abbreviation. For these case studies, we turn to Yahoo.com and Webreference.com.