(Hi! This is my first time asking a question on Stack Overflow after years of finding answers here... Thanks!)
I have a dynamic page, and I'd like to have fixed URLs that point to different states of that page. So, for example: "www.mypage.co"(/index.php) is the base page, and it rearranges its content based on user choices. I'd then like to be able to point to "www.mypage.co/contentA" or "www.mypage.co/contentB" in order to automatically load base the page at "www.mypage.co" with the desired content.
At heart the problem is an aesthetic one. I know I could simply write www.mypage.co/index.html?state=contentA to reach the desired end, but I want to keep the URL simple and readable (ie, clean). I also, due to limitations in my hosting relationship, would most appreciate a solution that is server-independent (across LAM[PHP] stacks, at least), if possible.
Also, if I just have incorrect assumptions about how to implement clean URLs, I'd appreciate direction to a good, comprehensive explanation. I can't seem to find one...
You could use a htaccess file to redirect all requests to one location and then from there determine what you want to return to the client. Look over the htaccess/dispatch system that Tonic uses.
If you use Apache, you can use mod_rewrite. I have a rule like this where multiple restful urls all go to the same page, using regex and moving parts of the old url into parameters for the new url:
RewriteRule ^/testapp/(name|number|rn|sid|unii|inchikey|formula)(/(startswith))?/?(.*) /testapp/ProxyServlet?objectHandle=Search&actionHandle=drillIn&searchtype=$1&searchterm=$4&startswith=$3 [NC,PT]
That particular regex accepts urls like
testapp/name
testapp/name/zuchini
testapp/name/startswith/zuchini
and forwards them to the same page.
I also use UrlRewriteFilter for Tomcat, but as you mentioned PHP, that doesn't seem that it would be useful.
Related
I am migrating a website and it has many redirections. I would like to generate a list in which I can see all redirects, target and source.
I tried using Cyotek WebCopy but it seems to be unable to give the data I need. Is there a crawling method to do that? Or probably this can be accessed in Apache logs?
Of course you can do it by crawling the website, but I advise against it in this specific situation, because there is an easier solution.
You use Apache, so you are (probably) working with HTTP/HTTPS protocol. You could refer to HTTP referrer, if you use PHP, then you can reach the previous page via $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']. So, you will need to do the following:
figure out a way to store previous-next page pairs
at the start of each request store such a pair, knowing what the current URL is and what the previous was
maybe you will need to group your URLs and do some aggregation
load the output somewhere and analyze
Good evening everyone! Thank you for opening this post.
I currently bought myself the ProCDN from MediaTemple (basically EdgeCast) and have setup a CDN where now I go to cdn-small.DOMAIN.com (or cdn-large.DOMAIN.com) it loads the normal website just fine...
However, I'm not sure which one to use.. Would I use this for the whole complete site to optimize, or use the links to add one by one for each script/stylesheet based on file size? (e.g. All JS/CSS will have the cdn-small while anything larger such as 300kb will have the cdn-large link)
And to say, if the correct way is to load the whole site as one link (e.g. everything is linked normally like js/jquery.js instead of a full link like https://cdn-small.domain.com/js/jquery.js).. Would I set a redirect from DOMAIN.com to cdn-small.DOMAIN.com for the best loading and that they only need to type in the domain not the full sub-CDN-domain?
Apologize if this isn't making sense or anything, but trying to do my best. To put it much more simple terms again is that I'm trying to find the best way to use my cdn-small/cdn-large for my website by having the user enter in the domain (https:// or http://) normally to serve my content as fast as possible near the user.
Kindly appreciate your time for reading this and wish you all a positive weekend.
Here is my live site if it even matters or want to experiement; http://bit.ly/1eGCShX
So, we're trying to up our application in the rankings in the search engines, and one way our SEO guy told us to do that was to register similar domains...for example we have something like
http://www.myapplication.com/parks.html
so..we acquired the domain parks.com (again just an example).
Now when people go to http://www.parks.com ...we want it to display the content of http://www.myapplication.com/parks.html.
I could just put a forwarding page there, but from what i've been told that makes us look bad because it's technically a permanent redirect..and we're trying to get higher in the search engine rankings, not lower.
Is this a situation where we would use the Server.Transfer method of ASP.net?
How are situations like this handled, because I've defiantly seen this done by many websites.
We also don't want to cheat the system, we are showing relevant content and not spam or tricking customers in anyway, so the proper way to do achieve what i'm looking for would be great.
Thanks
Use your "similar" domain names to host individual and targetted landing pages that will point to your master content.
It's easier to manage and you will get a higher conversion rate.
Having to create individual page will force you to write relevent content and will increase the popularity of the page.
I also suggest you to not only build landing pages, but mini sites (of few pages).
SEO is sa very high demanding task.
Regarding technical aspects: Server.Transfer is what you should use. Never use Response.Redirect, Google and other search engines will drop your ranking.
I used permanent URL rewrite in the past. I changed my website and since lots of traffic was coming from others website linking mine, I wanted to have a permanent solution.
Read more about URL rewriting : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972974.aspx
With ASP.NET MVC (or using HttpHandlers) you can dynamically generate URLs, like the one in this question, which includes the title.
What happens if the title changes (for example, editing it) and there's a link pointing to the page from another site, or Google's Pagerank was calculated for that URL?
I guess it's all lost right? (The link points to nowhere and the pagerank calculated is lost)
If so, is there a way to avoid it?
I use the same system as is in place here, everything after the number in the URL is not used in the db query, then I 301 redirect anything else to be the title.
In other words, if the title changed, then it would redirect to the correct place. I do it in PHP rather than htaccess as it's easier to manage more complex ideas.
I think you're generally best off having the server send a permanent redirect to the new location, if possible.
That way any rank which is gained from third party links should, in theory, be transferred to the new location. I'm not convinced whether this happens in practice, but it should.
The way Stackoverflow seems to be implemented everything after the question number is superfluous as far as linking to the question goes. For instance:
SEO and hard links with dynamic URLs
links to this question, despite the fact that I just made up the 'question title' part out of thin air. So the link will not point to nowhere and the PageRank is not lost (though it may be split between the two URLs, depending on whether or not Google can canonicalize them into a single URL).
Have your app redirect the old URL via a 301 Redirect. This will tell Google to transfer the pagerank to the new URL.
If a document is moved to a different URL, the server should be configured to return a HTTP status code of 301 (Moved Permanently) for the old URL to tell the client where the document has been moved to. With Apache, this is done using mod_rewrite and RewriteRule.
The best thing to help Google in this instance is to return a permanent redirect on the old URL to the new one.
I'm not an ASP.NET hacker - so I can't recommend the best way to implement this - but Googling the topic looks fairly productive :-)
Yes, all SEO is lost upon a url change -- it forks to an entirely new record. The way to handle that is to leave a 301 redirect at the old title to the new one, and some search engines (read: Google) is smart enough to pick that up.
EDIT: Fixed to 301 redirect!
i've been tasked with re-organizing a pure HTML site into a CMS. if all goes well, the new site will eventually become the main URL, and the old domain will be phased out. the old domain has a decent enough page rank, and the company wishes to mitigate any loss of page rank for that. in looking over the options available, i've discovered a few things:
it's better to use a 301 redirect when you're ready to make the switch (source).
the current site does not have a sitemap, so adding one and submitting it may help their future page rank.
i'll need to suggest to them that they contact people currently linking to them to update their links.
the process for regaining an old page rank takes awhile, so plan on rebuilding links while we see if the new site is flexible enough to warrant switching over completely.
my question is: as a result of a move to a CMS driven site, the links to various pages will change to accommodate the new structure. will this be an issue for trying to maintain (or improve) the current page rank? what sort of methods are available to mitigate the issue of changing individual page URL's? is there a preferable method beyond mapping individual pages to their new locations with 301 redirects? (the site has literally hundreds of pages, ugh...)
ex.
http://domain.com/Messy_HTML_page_with_little_categorization.html ->
http://newdomain.com/nice/structured/pages.php
i realize this isn't strictly a programming question, however i felt the information could be useful to developers who are tasked with handling this sort of thing in addition to development of the site.
edit: additions in italics
If you really truly want to ensure that page rank is not lost, you will want to replace the old content with something that performs a proper 301 redirect to the new location. With a 301 redirect the search spiders will know that the content is moved and the page rank typically carries over. It also helps external links.
However, the down side is that after a certain period of time you just have to get rid of the old domains.
You can make a handler for HTML files and map the old pages to the new structure with a 301 redirect.