3 replies to this topic

[Heatherdawn]

All of our sites are housed Apache servers. All dynamic pages have unwieldy strings that have not been made in to something a little more search engine friendly because “it’s too time consuming” and “low priority.” So these page are not being indexed very well if at all.

I’ve done some searches for techniques to create “nicer” dynamic pages and came up with a few ideas though the "PATH_INFO method" www.sitepoint.com/article/485 seems to be the “best” (Please feel free to let me know if, in your opinion, there is a better way).

What I’m wondering is, is this (or any) technique really that time consuming and difficult (I do not have the knowlede to do this level of programming, so I have no idea of time/difficulty)? Can anyone share with me so that I can properly arm myself before I press the issue?

Your thoughts are greatly apriciated.

Edited by Jill, 10 December 2003 - 04:44 PM.

[csjavi]

I would suggest mod_rewrite. PATH_INFO seems too complicated. The amount of work is directly proportional to the amount of different php pages and different sets of parameters. Writing the rewrite rules for a medium-sized website shouldn't take more than a few hours. Then you have to change all the links, of course.

Good planning before implementation saves a lot of tears. Remember, that you don't have to follow the original implementation. For example:
/index.php?param1=xx&param2=yy -> /something/xx/yy
/index.php?param1=xx -> /something/xx
/index.php?param2=yy -> /completely/yy
/index.php?param3=zz -> /different/zz

[Heatherdawn]

Some of the sites are pretty extensive. Would adding a couple of RewriteEngine lines to the .htaccess file like this be better?

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^subcategory/([0-9]+) cgi-bin/subcategory?id=$1/
RewriteRule ^category/([0-9]+) cgi-bin/category?id=$1/

Thanks

[Ruud]

Doing the rewrite rules in .htaccess can be a simple job. With overlapping rules and regex being the ultimate mystery you do need to have someone at work who is used to this stuff if your site contains a lot of different types of links.

The *actual* work is rewriting the scripts to generate these new kind of URL's. Depending on how cleanly coded the script(s) is (are) this can be a few hours job to a headbreaking time consuming endeavour.

Water of the wine but URL format is an essential part of web design IMO. Its structure has to be thought out before building the site permanently and if possible should be internally constructed in such a way that (a) linkrot can be prevented and ( the link format can be changed at will.

Ruud