My site currently handles URL's like this...
/?p=home
/?p=profile&userid=1
/?p=users.online
/?p=users.online&page=23
/?p=mail.inbox
/?p=mail.inbox&page=12
... and so on, there is probably at least 120-150 different pages, on my site a page is built like this,
index.php includes a main config file which then includes function/class files into it
index.php then includes a header file
index.php then includes the page file which is from the url ?p=pagename
index.php then includes a footer file
That is how every page on my site is compiled, through the index page like that and I have been considering/thinking about cleanning up the URL's as I am re-writing/restructuring most of my sites code right now, it's the perfect time to do it if I am going to do it. What I mean by cleanning up the URL's is using mod-rewrite so the URL structure above would look like this instead...
/home
/users/1 //user ID might switch to use username as well
/users/online
/users/online/23 or /users/online/page/23
/mail/inbox
/mail/inbox/12
So first of all is there any downfalls to doing this, does it create a lot more processing work since it is using mod_rewrite?
Also would it be hard to write the regex or whatever is needed to match the file names in the format that I show above, I listed only a few of the pages but there would be at least 100 different URL pages I have blogs, bulletins, forums, all kinds of stuff
Absolutely. That's one of Apache's main purposes, so it's been designed to do it very efficiently. In fact, I'd emplore you to use that method.
It makes cleaner URLs for visitors
It's fantastic for SEO
It makes the website more professional
It makes it easier for users to guess URLs if they are trying to find a certain page without actually traversing through your site ti find it.
There are no downfalls, and a ton of advantages to using that URL structure. Go for it!
Related
I need to put together a simple/small website fairly quickly for internal use (no external access), which will contain a few forms and simple interactive pages.
I don't really want the maintenance overhead of a CMS, but so that each page has a consistent look and feel, etc, it would be useful to be able to have each page be based on a common template to wrap around the unique page content, to include the HTML head, title, site navigation, footer, etc.
One approach would be to include various snippets via PHP within each individual page, but that involves repetition in each page, and doesn't scale well if I decide I might need to substantially change things later.
The alternative approach would be to use the main DocumentRoot index.php file as the template, and instead have it include the requested page 'within' itself (so that each of the other pages is actually really only a partial file defining variables for the 'title' and 'body' (for the main page body content)).
I see that I can use $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] to extract the desired file path (relative to the DocumentRoot) and $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] to get the whole request string (in case there might be any GET parameters); for the actual content of the index page itself I could have it include an alternatively-named file instead; and there must be some way in Apache rewrite rules that it would be possible to elide out the index.php from the eventual URIs, ..but I haven't yet thought through very much further than this.
I am sure that this must be a scenario encountered many many times before. I could well spend a couple of days trying to think this through and re-invent my own wheel, but I don't really have the time to do this, and it probably wouldn't be a very good use of it in any case.
Does anybody have some existing "quickie" code that would be "good enough" for this, or know of something "formally" published (at which point does a working quick hack become an actual software package?!)?
Thanks for any advice.
You could send your requested page as url parameter to your index.php, like 'index.php?page=requested_page' and include the following rule in your index.php at the position where you like to get your content
<?php
include("./pages/".$_GET['page'].".php");
?>
I'm not sure if any effort you will put into this will be less than the effort of implementing a simple CMS. Most systems have simple setups and do most of the work for you. Any time you save on not implementing a CMS will cost you later on maintenance. Don't use 'internal use' as an excuse to make bad software. Unless it's a one-time solution that will be disregarded in a few weeks, you (or another developer) will have to extend and maintain the software.
Redirect all requests to index:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(?!index\.php$|(?:css|js|media)(?:/|$)). index.php [L]
Something like that will stop redirect loops on the index and send everything except requests to static content folders (change to suit) to your handler in the index. Access the URL via $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].
I want to mask some of the subdirectories and pages for my website. For example:
I want to change
www.example.com/blog.php?post=post1
to
www.example.com/blog
or something similar to that. I have seen examples about redirecting and such but that doesn't seem to work for what I want and I would like to stay away from iframes if possible. I just want the address bar to not reflect my internal directory structure and page names. I want it to keep showing /blog while they are moving from post to post. Thanks.
P.S. I am not using wordpress or any other CMS or blogging system.
You can use apache mod_rewrite for that.
Mod Rewrite Generator
And if You don't want to have the same url on blog-post/article change, but to display different content, all I can think of this moment is by using either POST method or browser cookies, but, that would require a lot of page reloads, and it simply is not recommended for wide use. If You are building per_se (one person only) panel or similar, than url doesn't matter that much, but, speaking of blog..
It is quite reasonable to hide .php extension or url query index/key, but not what You would like to accomplish.
Like I said, it is possible, but Luke .. don't do that.
Blog should be bookmarkable on each and every #stop, and that happens just because of unique urls and hash values. Without these two, no hyperlinking possible *(not to mention seo penals and flaws + dozen of other unwanted obstacles, page caching for instance).
I am concerned this may not be possible (at least not easily) in Magento (1.4).
So we currently have a site set up:
shopping-public.mysite.com
Searching through core_config_data and the source code, shopping-public is referenced quite a few times.
What I want to accomplish is to have the following subdomain work on the same code base, AND have all the links between pages match up:
shopping-development.mysite.com
I have set up ServerAlias shopping-development.mysite.com in the .conf file, and it works - that is, I'm getting there, and the page is being presented.
However, it does NOT work in the sense that:
a) the references to the CSS files and JS files are still to shop-public.mysite.com, and
b) links to products and other pages are still to shop-public.mysite.com
How do I solve (a) and (b) so that, regardless of the subdomain (or even domain), asset file links and page links change relative to the (sub) domain I am on?
I am fairly new to Magento, and there are a LOT of xml values that reference this involved..
Magento have a lot of configuration.
core_data
htaccess if use apache need test rewrite rules ok or no.
and maybe hardcoded index.php with switch case?
But firstly try clean cache.
Magento will, as you can see, always attempt to redirect back to the primary domain. To achieve this, I think you'd probably be best using different store views/sites and then using .htaccess to load the specific site required.
With this approach, there would be a concern over duplicate-content in Google's eyes I'm sure.
Currently, I have a system that actively generates the pages on my site using PHP, more or less like so:
index.php ------include(query.php);-----> query.php grabs content from a file that corresponds to index.php
Query.php simply assembles the page from the mentioned index.php file and from header, footer, and navigation files.
The index.php file acts as a sort of proxy or label if you will so that when users visit the site, instead of having urls like "query.php?page=index" they have real pages.
The issue of course is that this is a bit convoluted. For each page of the site, I need 2 files: the "wrapper" file (such as index.php) and a content file to which it corresponds. I'd like to only be using a single file. The issue is that the single file should only contain the content of the page - not structure, header, footer etc.
So, what I'd like to be able to do is to be able to have index.php contain ONLYand a paragraph for example. When it is accessed, somehow PHP kicks in and applies a template and the header and footer.
Is PHP too high level a language to be able to do this? I know it is often done with Tomcat and java servlets, but I thought it would be cool to do with PHP.
EDIT: Important point, I don't want to use GET variables.
It's a bit hard to tell what you're trying to do, but have you looked into using a framework such as Kohana or Synfony? This will do pretty much exactly what you're asking.
If you're looking for a good template system, I suggest PHPTAL.
Failing that, it doesn't sound like you need to do anything that special. On the index.php page, why not just include header.php, the content, and footer.php? Short of using auto_append_file and auto_prepend_file, you can't add content to the page that is not explicitly in the code.
It sounds like what you want to do is route all requests through a single point (like frameworks do). Let's call it main.php.
On main.php you would have:
include header.php
include $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] . ".php" //Requested file from URL. TODO handle this better
include footer.php
Then you would route all requests (using your server configuration) to "/main.php/pagename." Then pagename would only need its respective content.
I am trying to use SEO-friendly URLs for a website. The website displays information in hierarchical manner. For instance, if my website was about cars I would want the URL 'http://example.com/ford' to show all Ford models stored in my 'cars' table. Then the URL 'http://example.com/ford/explorer' would show all the Ford Explorer Models (V-6, V-8, Premium, etc).
Now for the question:
Is mod_rewrite used to rewrite a query string style URL into a semantic URL, or the other way around? In other words, when I use JavaScript to set window.location=$URL, should the URL be the query string version 'http://example.com/page.php?type=ford&model=explorer' OR do I internally use 'http://example.com/ford/explorer' which then gives me access to the query string variables?
Hopefully, someone can see my confusion with this issue. For what it's worth, I do have unique 'slugs' made for all my top level categories (obviously, the site isn't about cars).
Thanks for all the help so far. I got the rewrite working but it is affecting other paths on the site (CSS, JavaScript, images). I using the correct path structure for all these includes (ie '/images/car.png' and '/css/main.css'). Do I have to use an absolute path ('http://example.com/css/main.css') for all files? Thanks!
Generally, people who use mod_rewrite use the terminology like this:
I want mod_rewrite to rewrite A to be B.
What this means is that any request from the outside world for page A gets rewritten to file B on the server.
You want the outside world to see URLs that look like
A) http://example.com/ford/explorer
but your web server wants them to look like
B) http://example.com/page.php?type=ford&model=explorer
I would say you want to rewrite (A) to look like (B), or you want to rewrite the semantic URL into a query string URL.
Since all the links on your page are clicked on by the user and/or requested by the browser, you want them to look like (A). This includes links that javascript uses in window.location. They can and should look like (A).
once you have set up mod_rewrite then your links should point to the mod_rewritten version of the URL (in your example: http://mysite.com/ford/explorer). Internally in your system you will still reference the variables as if they are traditional query string name value pairs though.
Its also worth pointing out that Google is now starting to advocate more logical URLs from a search engine point of view, i.e. a query string over mod rewrite
Does that mean I should avoid
rewriting dynamic URLs at all? That's
our recommendation, unless your
rewrites are limited to removing
unnecessary parameters, or you are
very diligent in removing all
parameters that could cause problems.
If you transform your dynamic URL to
make it look static you should be
aware that we might not be able to
interpret the information correctly in
all cases
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
also worth looking at:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/optimize-your-crawling-indexing.html