Question

Currently, our URL’s look something like this:

http://helpdesk.ourdomain.com

Recently, there has been talk of advertising these URLs (in publications, on websites, etc.) to look like this for readability purposes:

http://HelpDesk.OurDomain.com

Our web server handles going to the URL with upper-case elements in it correctly, meaning when you go to that URL, it rewrites the URL to be all lower-case. However, I was always taught that URL’s are meant to be case-sensitive. Keeping that in mind, I would think that advertising the URL’s with upper-case letters would not be something that should be done.

Is advertising URL’s with upper-case letters in it an okay practice? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Quoting the W3C:

URLs in general are case-sensitive (with the exception of machine names). There may be URLs, or parts of URLs, where case doesn’t matter, but identifying these may not be easy. Users should always consider that URLs are case-sensitive.

I would say not, keep it lowercase.