I'd like to redirect the user depending on the destination url and referrer url. Say I have a homepage url http://www.example.com/ and in that page there are a bunch of links that point to http://www.example.com/page/x/. When the user goes to http://www.example.com/page/ from http://www.example.com/ it should redirect to another page. But when the user goes to http://www.example.com/page/x/ via a link from http://www.example.com/ it should not redirect. In order to achieve this, the solution I am thinking is to get the destination url as well to correctly determine if the user comes from http://www.example.com/ but wants to view http://www.example.com/page/x/. Bottom line is I want to prevent access to http://www.example.com/page/ but not to its sub pages.
What you are trying to do here is scary bad.
You can't rely on the referer being returned by the browser (but it is a good indicator). You could use a generic javascript to rewrite every link on the page to append a CGI variable containing the URIencoded URL of the current page (but where javascript is enabled it won't work). Or you could put rewrite the output buffer to inject CGI vars into hrefs in PHP. Neither of these are trivial - and if they break your users will not be able to navigate.
But leaving aside the implementation for now - your solution seems to be rather absurd.
If the problem is to
prevent access to http://www.example.com/page/
but allow requests for
http://www.example.com/page/x/
Then create an index.php in http://www.example.com/page/ with something like....
<?php
header('Location: /', true, 301);
?>
Or disable auto-index on your webserver.
As it seems no one can access the example.com/page/, You can have a Header function in the http://www.example.com/page/ to redirect the page to some other page.
Related
I've been reading about redirection, and how it can affect (or not if done properly) SEO.
I'm changing my website's content platform from Drupal to a PHP custom made code.
In my current site I have two links that point to the same link like this:
.../node/123
.../my-node-title
Mainly because Drupal allows you to create a custom-made links, so every article has a default one (node/123) and the custom-made one (/my-node-title).
My question is about what to do in order to prevent losing any SEO that each link may have.
In the new website all articles are structured like this: content.php?id=123
I've stored in the database the custom-made link of every article.
Instead of doing a 301 redirect I'm redirecting all links that do not exist to be redirected to redirect.php page to process the request. There I take the string from the link, look for it in the database and redirect the user.
The process is like this:
in .htaccess file:
RewriteRule ^.*$ ./redirect.php
In redirect.php:
I grab the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] and using explode() I get the last part of the link (ie. my-node-title), look for it in the database and grab the ID of the article (ie. 123) and save it in a $link variable.
Then I use header() function and do the redirect: header('Location: '.$link);
So, people still click on .../my-node-title but when the article loads at the navigation bar appears /content.php?id=123
I would like to know your comments about this solution. I know that with SEO there are not fixed rules, or certainty in anything, but I would like to know if what am I doing is acceptable. Thanks!
Your SEO strategy should not only focus on discoverability of your pages, but also take proper UX into account. Having a user follow /some-link/, and then landing on /index.php?page_id=123 may disorient them.
As for saving your ranking, a 302 redirect (which is what the 'Location' header does in PHP), will not affect PageRank, according to Google. I have no information on how it might adversely affect other ranking signals. You would probably do good to specify a canonical URL for all distinct links that point to the same resource.
Also, be aware that your algorithm won't work, if query parameters are present. You might also want to look at properly handling optional trailing slashes.
Ideally, in my opinion, you would want to provide consistent URLs to the outside world, without any need for redirection. Your URL handling would then internally resolve them to their respective resources, serving the canonical URL on every page load.
How do I remove path inforation from a url?
For example in this url, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask, I want the user to only see http://stackoverflow.com. Is this possible to do?
I do a redirect in PHP from my root directory to path Foo. I don't want Foo to display in the URL.I also do a page reload of sorts using window.location.href = domain_name/foo. Similarly I don't want foo to display in the URL.
Is this possible to implment in Javascript or PHP or do I have to configure Apache to do this?
You cannot manipulate URLs in the browser's address bar using PHP or JavaScript. But you have guessed correctly, this is something that can be configured in Apache. For a primer on URL rewriting, take a look at this article.
I have seen websites that keep the user on the homepage and use AJAX to change the page content.
You should make yourself sober and then consider if you really want to hide anything and if your web site would work at all.
However, I can answer you already - it wouldn't.
We are using path information for the reason. And you'd better see it.
Read up on URL masking:
htaccess mask for my url
http://www.willmaster.com/library/web-development/URL-masking.php
etc... This cannot be handled in JS.
If you REALLY wanted to, you could do this in PHP: you would need to create an index.php page that was set up to handle the loading of other pages, and add a handler at the top of every page that detects the REQUEST_URI that sets any other link to redirect (header()) to the index page with the filepath stored in $_SESSION or another retrievable location. The index page would then render the requested page. However, this is ugly, wastes resources, and you're much better off with an apache level rewrite.
How do I display another url or main domain name instead of filename in php? For example suppose I am redirected to file http://example.com/myfolder/test.htm, then instead of specified url I want to display example.com in the address bar for such url. How can it be done?
you can do this with .htaccess here is a useful link.
Not with PHP, you can use Frames for that, but this isn´t relay a good design I think...
This can not be done in php. PHP is server side language and the request sent is from user.
So if you want user to open http://www.example.com and show http://www.example.com/folder/script.php page use URL REWRITE.
But if you want a user who have opened http://www.example.com/folder/script.php to show http://www.example.com in address bar but still show script.php content.
On accessing script.php page redirect to http://www.example.com/ and in your index page check for referrer. If its script.php (within your own domain) just include that page.
It will be a long work but it depends what you need. Its just an idea.
I just wanted to know, is there any possible way to change the URL that appears in the address bar of a webpage dynamically? Like, maybe there are two buttons on the webpage, and when the user clicks one it will (or won't it does not matter) refresh the page and the url will be mysite.com/page1, or if the user clickes the second button, the url that appears in the address bar will be mysite.com/page2?
I do not need it to chaneg the domain, just the part after.
Just wanted to say, that I DO NOT want to go to another page. This must be done on one page. It does not matter if it is done with JS, PHP, or via the .htaccess file, but it must do this with only one page.
Outside of changing the .location you only really have control over the window.location.hash.
window.location.hash = "boo"; http://mysite.com -> http://mysite.com/#boo
This is the only way to not go to a new page while changing the URL. All other methods will refresh the page or redirect the page:
window.location redirects user when changed
window.location.pathname redirects user when changed
window.location.search redirects user when changed
window.location.hash does not redirect user when changed
You can also just change the non domain path by using a relative url:
window.location = "page1"; // include forward-slash if necessary
// goes to http://somesite.com/page1
You can definitely (and easily) serve the same page off both /page1 and /page2 and have the buttons navigate respectively to one and the other -- "refreshing the page", as you say (i.e. loading it up again from the server, or browser cache), and of course change accordingly what appears in the address bar, too. However, I don't see what's the point of doing that.
I don't quite understand what you want.
Is it that in both cases, you want the same page to be shown but with different urls ?
In that case, you could write a .htaccess file to redirect to the same page for both /link1 and /link2 and point the button to either of the links.
Just to update this question in case others come along.
This can now be handled via javascript using pushState(). There's a couple of libraries (such as History.js) that aim to ease implementation across different browsers currently without proper support. However, if you'd like see a simple usage example without the use of such libraries, feel free to check out the following article on Hawkee
Dynamically change URLs using Push and Popstate
I'm new to mod_rewrite and need to do something for my client.
Suppose I have the www.mydomain.com/products.php?prod_id=32.
This product has a section (clothes) and a name (shirt). These names and sections are unique.
In a SEO-Friendly Url, it should be www.mydomain.com/products/clothes/shirt/.
I know I can create
RewriteRule ^products/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/?$ products.php?section=$1&name=$2
I can do that, and it works. But I want people who enter www.mydomain.com/products.php?prod_id=32 to be redirected to www.mydomain.com/products/clothes/shirt/ (changed in the browser itself). How can I do that without inserting the id in my url? Is it possible to call a "pre-processing" php file in my .htaccess, and recreate "products.php?section=$1&name=$2"?
Anyone has a good link with really detailed explanation of mod_rewrite?
Thanks!
You may have a bigger problem than mod_rewrite can handle gracefully. You can also use PHP to return a redirect to the browser. That way you can access your database to figure out that product_id 32 is /clothes/shirts/
I see no other option than doing it inside PHP.
You can add something to the top of your products.php page that checks the URL ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) to see if it contains products.php - If it does, redirect the person. You'll need to query your database to find out the product category and the name before redirecting though.
Remember to set the Moved Permanently header to improve SEO further :)
This data might be passed by the browser via the "Referer" header field. You could progress that url and look at the get arguments. If I remember right, this isn't supported on all browsers.
at the top of products.php (or any page you want to redirect) you could put a function call
redirectToSeoUrl();
Then in one of your include files write a redirectToSeoUrl function that gets the new url and redirects. Make sure to put the code before anything is output to the browser.
Apache? Try an .htaccess redirect. No mod_rewrite needed.
Example:
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.example.com/newpage.html