So I understand this may come across as a open question, but I need away to solve this issue.
I can either make the site do ajax request that load the body content, or I can have links that re-loads the whole page.
I need the site to be SEO compliant, and I would really like the header to not re-load when the content changes, the reason is that we have a media player that plays live audio.
Is there away that if Google BOT or someone without ajax enabled it does the site like normal href but if ajax or javascript allowed do it the ajax way.
Build the website without JS first, ensure it works as wished, each link linking a new unique page. Google parses your site without JS, so what you see with JS off is what he sees.
Then add the JS, with click handlers to prevent the default page reload and do your ajax logic instead. You could use JQuery and .load() to do this quite easily.
Other solution, you could use the recommended Google method ( https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/ ), but it's more work and less effective SEO-wise.
Or you can put your audio player in a iFrame...
Related
I'm looking for a solution similar to the php include method, except like at html's iframe tag, if I click a hyperlink on the included php, I don't want the browser to navigate the whole tab to the new url, but only navigating the included page without getting the parent page change/disappear.
UPDATE:
okay, thanks for the quick answers, seems like I didn't ask the right question:) so here is some background info: the whole page itself is a single-file website using the exactly same javascript+hiddendivs page changing method than that you just wrote. my problem is: I'm using a flat-file CMS to keep my News page managable by people having no coding knowledge. so I made an own template for the CMS only showing the news themselves. Then I embedded the CMS's index.php to my parent index.php with php include method and it looks really well, except my problem is, when I click "earlier posts", it navigates to the CMS's index.php and loads earlier news in there. I'd like it to load earlier news without navigating anywhere, just like at html's iframe method. (I will use iframe if there is no other solution, but its configuration would be really complicated if I wanted to stay cross-browser supportive)
From the action described it sounds like what you're looking for is not actually PHP but client side JavaScript. AJAX can perform exactly what you describe and there's a very easy library called jQuery to help you do this, with minimal effort.
http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.get/
http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/
You can bind your button to a JavaScript function which can then fire AJAX, grab the result of your other PHP page and display to the user in a .class or #id in the HTML, without leaving the current page.
If the behaviour your looking for is more advanced and "app like" you can also consider entire MVC JavaScript frameworks such as Backbone.js or Ember.js
The best thing you could possibly do is use jquery/javascript and manipulate a div (or the iframe) to where it navigates to X link when interacted with. You can actually change the url of an iframe using jquery and have it re-load to any url that you want. Reload an iframe with jQuery is a good example of how to do that. And for interacting with and digging through the contents of an iframe, instead of just changing the attributes of it, take a look at http://developer.vimeo.com/player/js-api.
Do keep in mind that the 2nd link is for a media player, BUT it still shows (and in a very simple way) how to interact well with iframes. You could use jquery to insert an id or class to the links in the page originally loaded into the iframe, then have the script on the 'parent page' navigate the iframe to one of the links when it's clicked. Just toy around with it some and have fun with it; a learning experience doesn't always have to be like a personal hell. I'll check back later and see how things turn out!
To do this you must understand what you are dealing with.
The *.php page loaded into user's browser is a processed and parsed page.
This parsing occurs at the server-side, and processed by the PHP processor on the server.
Now, after a *.php file is processed any interaction with it is lost. The only thing a user (client-side) sees is the result of this processing. Hence, to communicate with this page an information must be sent.
Normally, browsers send information on requesting a page. That is how the HTTP protocol works.
Since the user is the client-side, he must send relevant information (headers, variables, etc.) by the rules of the protocol. This means, a user must request the page and by this request the data will be sent.
AJAX technology allows you to open an HTTP request dynamically, on the background, while the page is still running with no need to refresh. It sends the relevant data according to protocol's convention and allows you to trigger a callback function to handle the answer when it arrives from the server.
Here you can find a beginner's tutorial, that will provide the necessary information for you to start.
P.S.
I would strongly recommend you not to use common external libraries like jQuery, node.js, Backbone.js etc. at the beginning. These libraries are tools that were created to simplify code writing for advanced developers. They may confuse you and mess up your programming logic and learning path.
Good luck!
Sounds like you want new content to appear on the page, without the user being directed to a new page. You can achieve this with jQuery. This is a quick example.
HTML:
<p>
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3
</p>
<div>
<div id="content1">
This is page 1.
</div>
<div id="content2">
This is page 2.
</div>
<div id="content3">
This is page 3.
</div>
</div>
jQuery:
$('#content2, #content3').hide();
$('a').click(function() {
var id = $(this).attr('id');
$('#content' + id).show().siblings().hide();
});
Live Example: http://jsfiddle.net/VxZKs/1
I'm trying to code a seo friendly ajax portfolio right now. My goal is to provide javascript effects to users and normal html to bots/users without js.
Files:
index.php (starting point of my program)
aboutme.php (contains html code for "about me")
contact.php (contains html code for "contact")
The idea:
User visits index.php and clicks on "About me" -> loading animation appears -> aboutme.php gets loaded with ajax -> history.pushstate rewrites the url to aboutme.php.
-> When the user shares the current website url on fb/twitter/g+ the bots will get the correct title, body etc., as it is the normal html page without any javascript.
But my problem is: If other users open that page, they see directly the content. But I want to show them a loading animation first until the data got loaded with ajax (similar as they click on a link).
How can I achieve such an approach? Thank you very much!
Best way to do this, create a javascript file. Write the link tag into "head" part. This will make the javascript file downloaded before content. Javascript shows the animation, but at the same time browser will be downloading the content already in the background. On "document ready" event, stop animation.
This will let bots to access the content directly. Because javascript won't work for them.
To make your ajax content crawlable see https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/, Bing supports this as well. Or use the HTML5 pushState, see http://www.seomoz.org/blog/create-crawlable-link-friendly-ajax-websites-using-pushstate, https://github.com/blog/760-the-tree-slider etc.
I've always thought this is more effort than its worth(generally), but to answer your question:
index.php, aboutme.php, contect.php should deliver full html.
certain links should have js event handlers intercept the click, and instead of loading aboutme.php, they load aboutme-content-only.php in the background. then update the dom and push state etc...
this way the site can easily degrade for those users who are first time visitors, as well as those whose browsers dont support push state or javascript.
I think that it is not a problem at all, keep your href of links as usual, then using JavaScript or jQuery change the default behavior of clicking link to load the linked contents with ajax.
my question is about this website - http://www.bits-apogee.org/2011/
whenever you click on the link in the side navigation bar, the middle part of the website is dynamically loaded. Also, the url also changes, everything else remains unchanged. how is this done?
is this some query plugin?
I totally agree with #JMCCreative. It looks like it's an actual refresh. You should look at the following post on StackOverflow.
Modify the URL without reloading the page
The site is using Hashes (#) in the URL to denote the new content being loaded.
This is useful for people bookmarking dynamically loaded content (normally hashes load to specific areas on a page, named anchors or ID's for new browsers), because they don't trigger the page to refresh...
http://www.highrankings.com/urls-with-hashtags-307 there are drawback (SEO) concerns to this... however you will notice more and more sites doing it so i would assume the SEO robots will get better.
There are 2 possibilities:
You can use the HTML5 capabilities to change the url (history pushState), however this feature isn't available in all browsers yet. For more information, look at this SO post: Is there a way to change the browser's address bar without refreshing the page? .
You can use a hashtag (#) part as fall back for browsers who don't have above feature yet.
If you use jQuery, you can use the handy plug-in jQuery Address. This will take care of both above cases.
They're not using a plugin. They're doing an ajax request to a URL like this:
http://www.bits-apogee.org/2011/getcontent/?even=Rachel+Armstrong
and dumping the overview in the container.
The circle of this type of process is usually like this:
listen for link clicks
on click, prevent default on event.
user window.history.pushState to update url
some other code - hears new history
generates a url to get the content.
ajax load the url
dump the data into a container
2 Libraries I have used, both are easier than the above, as they rely on loading a regular html page via AJAX instead the example site you point to, which used a JSON format to get the data.
Pjax - update peices of the page, by pulling that HTML node from a different URL.
Ajaxify - easiest solution, you could do that effect on an HTML site in 10 minutes.
Using the following tutorial I want my website to use AJAX to load the content (but also want to be able to use the back button etc. etc):
http://www.queness.com/post/328/a-simple-ajax-driven-website-with-jqueryphp
Ofcourse if someone has javascript disabled the website should also work (without Ajax).
The problem however comes when a javascript enabled user sends a link to a non javascript enabled user. Because javascript is disabled it will not handle the #-tag correctly and will just go to the homepage (so linking directly to pages from a javascript user to non-javascript user is impossible). Is there a way to resolve this issue (preferably php or htacces).
HTML5 gives us methods to alter the URL without refreshing the page https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Manipulating_the_browser_history#Adding_and_modifying_history_entries
This means you can update something without a page refresh but still give the user a url they can bookmark or send to someone else. These urls will work without JavaScript, as long as you have pages at those locations or are catching them with mod_rewrite or similar.
https://github.com/browserstate/history.js is a great little pollyfill which will use the HTML5 history stuff if the browser supports it, otherwise (Internet Explorer) it changes the hash of the url.
Basically, three steps:
code your "a" tags just normal: <a href='about'>About us</a>
in your javascript code, intercept all click events on <a> tags and navigate to # + this.href. So when they click the above url, you navigate to site.com/#about instead of site.com/about
in your javascript code, have a timer function that reads the hash value form the current location and loads a corresponding url (with # removed) via ajax
Since you code your html just as usual, the site remains fully accessible for non-js users, and, more important, for search engines' bots.
In response to the comments I can suggest the following:
redirect your home page via javascript from just site.com to site.com/js/
when <a href='about'> is clicked, navigate to site.com/js/#about
on the "js" page, have something like <a id=about href="/about">click here</a> for non-js users
Why not just build your application normally and then add the AJAX on top, rather than going the other way round and causing more work for yourself?
Ask yourself, why do you need AJAX page transitions? Does your app actually need them, or is it just because you've seen it on another site, like Twitter?
Many web pages load all of their content to change very little information.
Now I would like to know why shouldn't the developers just use ajax for the main page requests?
On my own webpage, I would like to develop the main requests on my webpage with just ajax but I don't know any specific cons with this approach.
Does anybody have an idea why someone shouldn't use ajax so much?
Search engines, crawlers/spiders, browsers with no javascript, screen readers and other consumers of the content will not be very happy with it.
You can provide tons of ajax behavior on top of you website if you already support standard server side navigation for the full content. Have a look at progressive enhancement (SO) and progressive enhancement (wiki).
The whole premise really is that with AJAX you don't need to reload the whole page to update a small percentage of that webpage. This saves bandwidth and is usually much quicker than reloading the whole page.
But if you are using AJAX to load the whole page this is in fact counterproductive. You have to write customised routines to deal with the callback of the AJAX data. Its a whole lot of extra work for little to no increase in performance.
General rule for where to use AJAX: If your updating >50% of your page, just reload, else use AJAX.
I'll give you one very good reason.
If you turn off javascript in the browser it won't work.
The biggest con are users who have JavaScript disabled. Your website simply won't work for them.
Aside from the answers already posted, using AJAX can have ugly side effects on browser control, such as the stop button not working.
One thing is that you want content to have a static url, you want people to be able to link to your pages, bookmark them, etc.
If everything is ajaxified, this could be tricky and/or tedious.
Well if you want to AJAX load new pages, such as the same way Gmail works, I suggest your links are normal A HREF links that point to a true full rendering page URL and alos use an onclick event that stop the attempt at normal link loading and make your AJAX calls. The problem here is you'll be doing almost double coding unless you architecture this all very well.
This way the normal non JS links load the full page, and the JS calls only load the new parts or page. This means spider indexing works again too.
Well, you can always add the onclick event unobtrusively using jquery and stop the normal URL handling.
Eg:
HTML
<a id="ajaxify-this" href="my-working-url">Click me to do AJAXy stuff if you have javascript</a>
then Javascript
$(document).ready(function() {
$("#ajaxify-this").click( function(e) {
updateContent(); // do something ajaxy with the page
return false; // stop the click from causing navigation
})
}
I use only JavaScript and EJS as template Engine for my own webside. One step closer to SOFEA/SOUI.
Search engines, crawlers/spiders, browsers with no javascript, screen readers dislike it, right. But I follow the mainstream ;)