Making Ouro more open and discoverable across the Internet

This past week we've been reworking the URL scheme for assets, users/organizations, and teams. Also, we've made some improvements to SEO and discovery of content on Ouro.

New URL structure

Links to assets, teams, users, organizations have all been updated.

Previously, links were long and unreadable:
/elements/earth/datasets/954ee78d-d34a-4c3f-83ec-6b9b3a2a11e1
We now have something like:
/datasets/mmoderwell/the-name-of-the-dataset

Not only is it shorter and without an ugly UUID, but now we have information about the author and the name of the dataset. So much better. I'm really happy how this set of changes came together.

You'll still be able to access assets with the old URLs as we did set up redirects, but that shouldn't effect too many.

Discoverability

We've implemented a major restructuring of our page hierarchy to improve navigation and content discovery. The major theme is creating a platform where the distinction between "app" and "website" is increasingly blurred.

1. Top-level pages for key asset types: Datasets, services, routes, and posts now have dedicated top-level pages. This change elevates the importance of these content types and makes them more easily accessible. For example:

   • ouro.foundation/datasets

   • ouro.foundation/services

   • ouro.foundation/posts

2. Removal of the /app prefix: We've eliminated the /app prefix from our URL structure. This change was made for several reasons:

   • It simplifies our URL structure, making it cleaner and more intuitive.

   • It removes an unnecessary layer of hierarchy, bringing users closer to the content they're seeking.

   • It aligns with modern web practices, where the distinction between "app" and "website" is increasingly blurred.

   • It improves SEO by placing important content closer to the root of our domain.

3. User-centric approach: We've emphasized the importance of individual users and organizations by giving them root-level pages. For instance:

   • ouro.foundation/nousot - this change highlights the value we place on our community members and makes it easier for them to showcase their work and contributions.

4. Improved asset categorization and discovery: These new top-level pages will serve as hubs for their respective content types. We'll be releasing enhancements to these pages soon.

SEO benefits

While a lot of the changes made were for aesthetics, the implications of them ended up improving more than just the look and feel.

We had to restructure assets to fit underneath an entity (user or organization) so that we can have assets with the same name (as long as they're owned by different users). If we didn't include the entity, the good names would very quickly get used up and names would degrade in quality and readability.

These URL structure changes also have these benefits:

1. Improved search engine indexing: With the new URL structure, search engines can more easily understand the content hierarchy and relationships between assets, users, and organizations. This can lead to better indexing and potentially higher search rankings.

2. Enhanced user experience: The new URLs are more user-friendly and memorable, making it easier for people to share and remember links to specific assets or profiles.

3. Increased click-through rates: The descriptive URLs now include relevant keywords (like the dataset name and author), which can improve click-through rates from search engine results pages.

4. Better social media sharing: When shared on social platforms, the new URLs will create more attractive and informative link previews, potentially increasing engagement.