I am working on building my first search-engine friendly CMS. I know that perhaps one of the biggest keys to having and SEO site is to have search-engine friendly URLs. So having a link like this:
http://www.mysite.com/product/details/page1
will result in much better rankings than one like this:
http://www.mysite.com/index.php?pageID=37
I know that to create URLs like the first one, I have one of two options:
use a web technology, in this case PHP, to create a directory structure
leverage Apache's mod_rewrite add-on to have these URLs passed to a PHP processor
As far as the PHP goes, I'm pretty comfortable with anything. However, I think the first option would be more difficult to maintain.
Could someone show me how to write an .htaccess file, which will:
silently direct SEO URLs to a processor script
not redirect if the requested URL is an actual directory on the server
Is there a better way than the way I am trying it?
You can use .htaccess for apache, create file in your root folder of web mainly "htdocs" name it ".htaccess" add next content to it
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
Options -Indexes
</IfModule>
in your php file you can access data from $_GET
$_GET['url'];
Then you can use data to parse what you need.
Yes, the first option would be pretty hard to maintain. If you want to change the header of the pages, you'd need to recalculate all of the pages.
The simplest way to do that would be to have a PHP file named product.php or product/details.php and use the $_SERVER\['PATH_INFO'\] variable to figure out what the client requested.
Related
I want to have a single PHP file that takes care of multiple URLs in a subdirectory.
For example, my site is http://www.startingtofeelit.com/. I want one php file, say, called playlist.php which would handle when a user goes to http://www.startingtofeelit.com/playlist/101 or if they go to http://www.startingtofeelit.com/playlist/142 etc. I want to be able to strip the number (101, 142 in my example urls above) to use as a variable (the playlist ID), so I can display the correct playlist.
I know that I can create an index.php in my playlist subdirectory and use GET variables like http://www.startingtofeelit.com/playlist?id=102 and get the ID that way, but this is much sloppier looking and I'd like to be able to know how to do it the other way.
My site is built on WordPress, but I don't think this should make a difference in any way.
Well, you cannot achieve this with PHP alone.
If you use Apache, you can use .htaccess
If you use IIS, you can use URL Rewrite
The basic idea behind those modules is to mapping from one URL to another URL. For example: you would want to map from
http://www.startingtofeelit.com/playlist/142 =>
http://www.startingtofeelit.com/playlist.php?id=142
You can express the URL mapping in regular expression. For example, in .htaccess (Apache). You can write like this
RewriteRule ^playlist/([0-9]+)/?$ playlist.php?id=$1
Noted that, you need to have .htaccess file in your website directory. Since, you are using Wordpress, chance that you have existed .htaccess is high. You can simply append that line of code to existed .htaccess
The following is an explanation of the regular expression:
^playlist/ # any URL start with playlist/
([0+9]+) # following by number, and store it as $1
/?$ # end with or without /
Mapping to
playlist.php?id=$1 # where $1 is taken from the matched number from our pattern.
This is usually handled in a way similar to what you already tried. However, it's common to use a re-writing script so that your application will accept a clean URL such as:
http://www.startingtofeelit.com/playlist/142
...and re-write it for your application as such:
http://www.startingtofeelit.com/playlist?id=142
For example, if you're using an Apache web server and have the mod_rewrite module installed and enabled, you can use the following snippet in an .htaccess file and use your GET parameter as you indicated you already know how to do. Other popular web servers have unique URL re-writing modules that will let you do the same.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
# Rewrite this:
# http://www.example.com/somepage/1
# ...into this:
# http://www.example.com/somepage?id=1
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
I currently run a site with 750 pages of .html webpages (yeah I know it was a stupid idea, but I'm a novice). I'm looking to move these to php. I don't really want to set up 750 individual 301 redirects and rewrite each page to .php
I've heard that I can use htaccess to this. Anyone know how?
A few additional questions -
Can I permanently redirect these links from html to php without losing my search engine rankings and
if I want to add php to each of the files (i.e. a php file menu (using the include command) to make the links quicker to update will this work? Because won't they still be html files?
Sorry for the stupid questions, but I'm still learning.
Congratulations on a 750 page site - you must have put some work into that.
To collect your current list of pages use a tool called xenu to create an export into excel. You can then easily change the name the files to PHP in column b and create a .htaccees file.
However why would you want 750 php files? If you have lots of data pages, make it one page and suck in the HTML main content and reference one page. If you have a page called warehouse-depot-22-row-44.html then change that to show-warehouse-row.php?depot=22&row=44 and return that content only. This will significantly reduce your number of pages and to start using databases to render the content.
For redirecting you could use the Apache Module mod_rewrite: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html
You can use url rewriting to match a specific file name request with a regular expression and then decide where to redirect if matched
RewriteRule ^myname/?$ myname.php [NC,L]
http://www.addedbytes.com/articles/for-beginners/url-rewriting-for-beginners/
Depends on the structure you have.
You want the user to access them in their natural location?
/public_html/folder1/file.php
user would access like
mydomain.com/folder1/file
or you want to map them differently?
Personally I think I would use a rewrite rule to map all requests to my /public_html/index.php and would map the requests from there using php (using include for instance). This gives great flexibility, plus you have a single point of entry for your application which is very beneficial since you can easily maintain control of the application flow.
The .htaccess would look like this
#
# Redirect all to index.php
#
RewriteEngine On
# if a directory or a file exists, use it directly
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index\.php
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/[^.]*|\.(php|html?))$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/[^.]*|\.)$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* index.php [L]
of course I place all my not directly accessible files (everything except index and css, js, images, etc) to a folder outside the public_html to ensure no user can ever access them directly ;)
I've had a similar (yet much much smaller) site that went through the same thing.
I have this in my .htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ $1.php [L]
This will help redirect any visitors to your .html addresses to your .php addresses.
You hopefully have an IDE (I recommend Aptana), and you can use some of the find/change functions project-wide, and hopefully with some time and patience get your internal links from .html to .php.
But, I caution you a little bit - Perhaps it is time to look into a database based CMS, such as Wordpress or Drupal?
I just inherited a website built in PHP. The main page of www.mysite.com has a href to www.mysite.com/index/35.html somewhere in the page. In the site's root directory and its children there is no document 35.html.
The number 35 is actually an id found in a DB which also holds the html contents of the page.
If I load URL: www.mysite.com/index.php?id=35 the same page loads.
How does PHP know how to automatically convert
/index/35.html
to
/index.php?id=35
EDIT
Based on the answers, I have found a .htaccess file containing rewrite instructions that would explain the functionality.
However, IIS doesn't seem to (or is not configured) know how to use this. (probably because this is an Apache feature?)
So this begs the following question: Is there a way to configure IIS to work with this?
it will be done usign URL Rewriting using .htaccess - should be in the webroot.
It may look something like:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]
May have other bits, but what this basically tells apache is to send anything that DOES NOT physically exist to index.php
It doesn't. There is a mod_rewrite rule that rewrites from /index/foo to /index.php?id=foo, either in a .htaccess file somewhere or in the httpd configuration itself.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^index/([\d]+)\.html /index.php?id=$1 [NC,L]
This is off the top of my head. Any browsers trying to load an address starting with index/ has any number ending in .html will be internally redirected to index.php?id= whatever the number is.
Edit: Just saw that your working on IIS. This probably won't work for you. Sorry.
I think you will be using .htaccess to redirect all requests to index.php. From there You can pass the query string a routing class, which will parse the url and identify the unique ids.
In this case we can say like, your routing class will parse the request /index/35.html to indexController, indexAction, id=35. now you can pass this id to the model to get corresponding page contents
NB : Here I a am assuming you are using mvc pattern. Anyway it can be treated in your own way, with the concept remaining the same. Hope this make sence.
I would to know how one is able to append a username directly to a site url without having to put it within a query?
Eg
www.myspace.com/micheal
instead of
www.myspace.com?name=micheal
Without having to create a new folder for the user so that when the url is typed including the name, the surfer is taken directly to the user's profile.
Thanx
If you're using Apache, which, using PHP, you most likely are, look into mod_rewrite. This lets you do things like this, where www.myspace.com/micheal would be translated internally to www.myspace.com/?name=micheal before being sent to the scripts.
Take a look here http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html for the documentation on how to use it.
For the Apache web-server .htaccess file with the following code will do the thing.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?name=$1 [QSA,L]
This is called url rewriting, and is handled by mod_rewrite on Apache servers.
A rewrite rule takes the incoming uri, parses it and rebuilds it into what the script needs to run.
A very simple example:
RewriteRule ^michael$ /?name=michael$
There's lots on Google when you know where to look. Start here:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html
As everyone has pointed out you want URL Rewriting.
If you are using IIS rather than Apache, there are still a couple of options.
Free Option - Ionics Isapi rewrite filter
Commercial Option - Isapi_Rewrite
I think you might be referring to "Pretty URLS" which is generally setup on a web server level using something like Apache mod_rewrite:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html
http://www.roscripts.com/Pretty_URLs_-_a_guide_to_URL_rewriting-168.html
In order to get better SEO and cleaner URLs, I tend to export certain RewriteRules directly into the .htaccess (eg, RewriteRule ^The_North_Face(.*)$ index.php?a=brands&id=27&extras=%1 [NC,L] and so forth for each brand or category). It's a lot more complex than that but today I discovered that the file is only as good as the data it's trying to use. The site owner managed to put empty category names / URLs and some unescaped characters that caused a nasty internal server error, blocking any and all site access (inclusive of the tool to rebuild it).
I realise that the best defence here will probably be good training + failsafe at the CMS level. Regretfully, this is a 3-rd party solution called CubeCart which I can't dip into for the time being, the SEO solution was supposed to be standalone and just using the CubeCart data.
Obviously, I'd have to add some checks to do with brand / category / landing page names. Even so, I'd very much like to parse / validate the newly built .htaccess before replacing the 'live' one in order to avoid possible issues to do with syntax. Are there any syntax validators / ways to test Apache against a new .htaccess?
I can also think of deploying it in a sub-directory, then using curl to GET a few requests as a test, anything else I can do?
You may use something like WordPress does:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
... and then in the index.php file parse the $_SERVER["REDIRECT_URL"] against your website's URI logic. This way it would be easier for you to process any database variables like brand or category automatic through the PHP, without editing the .htaccess file on every content change.
I would suggest redirecting all requests to a file rewrite.php. There, you parse the requested file and match it against an array of rules. You use the result for filling the $_GET array and then include the correct file.
PHP syntax errors are much easier to find and you will definitely not get a 500 error page.