Metatags, Keywords &amp; PHP

Metatags, Keywords & PHP

Magical_Wonders

Hello Folks,

I'm putting a new site together but am very new to PHP and would appreciate a bit of advice on one aspect.

The keywords & metatags will differ from page to page, and I was wondering if there is any advantage to having this information in separate files and using an include statement for each page?

Or, would it make more sense to just have the keywords and metatags directly on each page and just edit them in situ as and when changes are needed?

I can't see which method would be easier to maintain, or if it even matters! Just wondering what the experts do?

Hope someone can advise.

Many thanks,

Myles

etully

Here's how I do it:

Assume that I have 50 pages on my site (About Us, Contact Us, Fees, Products, Information, etc).

Every page gets a number.

Every page has the following code at the top of the page:

<?php
$page = ##;  //   Where ## is the code for the current page
include("header.php");
?>

Then, inside header.php, I read from the database to get the metatags and keywords for that particular page and print them into the HTML. This way, I can make an Admin page for editing each page's keywords so that when I turn the site over to my client, they can manage this stuff themselves without having to know HTML and without having to call me.

Giving each page it's own code number (and specifying it at the top) has a nice side effect: I can make header.php appear customized for certain pages. For example, if the client wanted me to make the header displayed in the color red on page 26, I can include a line in header.php that says:

if ($page==26) { print "bgcolor=red"; }

and other little customizations like that.

Magical_Wonders

Hi,

Thanks for the help. I haven't got as far as learning how to use databases yet, but will come back to your advice when I do. It sounds like a good way to go.

Regarding..

$page = ##; // Where ## is the code for the current page

Is this where I give each page a number? E.g. $page=1; // for "index page" or
$page=2; // on "contact us" page etc.,?

Many thanks,

Myles

etully

Is this where I give each page a number?

Yes, that's exactly right. You make up the number. It doesn't matter what number you choose for each page. It's just a way of communicating with the include file.

For example, you might write this inside your contact us page:

$page = 7;
include("header.php");

Then, inside header, you might say:

<?php
if ($page==1) { print "<body bgcolor='#ffffff'>"; }
elseif ($page==3) { print "<body bgcolor='#ffff00'>"; }
elseif ($page==7) { print "<body bgcolor='#00ffff'>"; }
else { print "<body bgcolor='#ff00ff'>"; }
?>

That way, you can have one include file... but it can be a little flexible. Even though the header is the same on every page, it can be made to be slightly different for pages 1, 3, and 7 in this example.

This technique is what we would call "hard coded". That is, you wrote something into the page that is pretty much glued in place. In this example, page 7 will always have a bg color of #00ffff. If you read the value from a database and let the owner of the site alter the database, then she could make changes without having to call you to change the PHP code - so the bgcolor wouldn't be hard coded if you used a database.

Magical_Wonders

That's great. Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me.

Best wishes,

Myles

Magical_Wonders

O.K. I'm struggling a bit here. I keep getting the following error message when trying out this code.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ELSEIF in C:\webroot\header.php on line 4

I have the following code in my index.php

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
          <head>
                 <title>Magical Wonders - Serving The Magic Community Worldwide
                  Since 1985</title>
<?php
// Include meta tags
$page = 1; 
include ('header.php');
?>

And the following in the file called header.php

<?php 
if ($page==1)  	{ print "META name=description content=A great resource for all things magic.<br>"; } 
		{ print "META name=keywords content=magic, tricks, cards, stage"; }
elseif ($page==2)  { print "META name=description content=testing a group of other words <br>"; }  

		{ print "META name=keywords content=one, two, three, four"; }	
?>

The error seems to refer to a missing brace, but as far as I can see, they all seem to be intact.

Can anyone suggest where I've messed up?

Thanks,

Myles

NogDog

Each if, elseif, or else should only have one set of "curly braces" around the block of code to be executed for that condition.

<?php 
if ($page==1) 
{ 
   print "META name=description content=A great resource for all things magic.<br>";
   print "META name=keywords content=magic, tricks, cards, stage"; 
}
elseif ($page==2)  

{ 
   print "META name=description content=testing a group of other words <br>";
   print "META name=keywords content=one, two, three, four"; 
}	
?>

NogDog

PS: the way I do it on my web site:

include.php (simplified):

<?php
function head($title, $keywords, $description)
{
   $html = "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd'>
<html lang='en'>
<head>
<meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1'>
<title>$title</title>
<meta name='keywords' value='$keywords'>
<meta name='description' values='$description'>
</head>
<body>
 ";
}
?>

some_page.php:

<?php
require "include.php";
head('Page Title', 'list,of,keywords', 'Description of this page.');
?>
<h1>This page's content starts here</h1>
<p>Yadda, yadda, yadda.</p>
...

Magical_Wonders

Thanks for that. I've corrected the brace error. For some reason I'm now getting the description and keywords actually being displayed on the page.

META name=description content=A great resource for all things magic.
META name=keywords content=magic, tricks, cards, stage

is showing in the browser!

The code is contained within the head tags, as follows,

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
  <title>Magical Wonders - Serving The Magic Community Worldwide
Since 1985</title>

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

<?php
// Include meta tags
$page = 1; 
include ('header.php');
?> 

<link media="all" href="styles.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet">

</head>

so not sure why this is happening?

Any ideas?

Magical_Wonders

O.K. I can see that my missing quotes for keywords and content has caused the problem!