Removing PHP Code from URL - making search engine friendly dynamic URL

dweiss

How can I change my displayed links from:

http://www.mysite.com/links3/jump.php?id=27&url=http://www.linkedsite.com

I've got a small open source links management program that generates the URLs displayed to visitors in the format:
http://www.mysite.com/links3/jump.php?id=27&url=http://www.linkedsite.com

That link is generated by this code:
print("<div><a href=\"jump.php?id=$rec_id&url=$url\" title=\"Go to the website $name\"><strong>$name</strong></a> - $description</div>");

where jump.php is a small script that increments a counter for the number of times a link is clicked.

I'd like to change the code so that the counter still works but that the link the user (and a search engine) sees doesn't have all the extra stuff in it and is only: http://www.linkedsite.com

I've been told that one solution might be to use mod_rewrite for the URL, but I don't have a clue how to actually use that tool. Can someone please help?

Thanks,

-Danny.

bpat1434

Why are you worried about search engines? They parse dynamic URLs perfectly fine now. no need to make "search engine friendly" URLs unless you want more-readable URLs for the user.

mod_rewrite won't "silently" rewrite the url. By that I mean you won't be able to "mask" your domain with the domain of the users choice. So really you have two choices:
1.) Use .htaccess and do a full redirect
2.) POST the information instead of GETting it. Then do your "increment" and redirect via the [man]header/man function.

But if you wanted the .htaccess redirect, it's this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)url=(.*) $2 [NC]

NC = Case insensitive

Now, you may wish to do more reading on this. Apache documentation...
.htaccess URL masking/cloaking...

dweiss

bpat1434 wrote:
Why are you worried about search engines? They parse dynamic URLs perfectly fine now. no need to make "search engine friendly" URLs unless you want more-readable URLs for the user.

Well, I'm new at this; I'm really working on my first major site. So, in the learning process I keep hearing that I should use simple links to keep things friendly for both people and search engine.

That aside, thanks for the tips,

-Danny.