Pros and Cons of using hierarchical URLs versus flat?
<p>I'm building a large news site and we'll have several thousand articles. So far we have over 20,000. We plan on having a main menu which contains links which will display articles based on those criteria. Therefore, clicking "baking" will show all articles related to "baking", and "baking/cakes" will show everything related to cakes.</p>

<p>Right now, we're weighing whether or not to use hierarchical URLs for each article. If I'm on the "baking/cakes" page, and I click an article that says "Chocolate Raspberry Cake", would it be best to put that article at a specific, hierarchical URL like this:</p>

<pre><code>website.com/baking/cakes/chocolate-raspberry-cake
</code></pre>

<p>or a generic, flat one like this:</p>

<pre><code>website.com/articles/chocolate-raspberry-cake
</code></pre>

<p>What are the pros and cons of doing each? I can think of cases for each approach, but I'm wondering what you think.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>