[RESOLVED] A little Rewrite puzzle

Tim_Silva

Hi,

My current file names uses a Rewrite to get the files to be of the type: news-1234.htm where 1234 is the table id.

RewriteRule news- (.*).htm$ article.php?id=$1

After many hours of hard work I was finally able to get the file name to be of the type: news-my-long-file-name.htm by creating a urlTitle column and using another Rewrite.

RewriteRule news- (.*).htm$ article.php?urlTitle=$1

In order not get a 404 from links to the site I could maintain both rewrites and only change the new one to article2.php (a different page that will have a $urlTitle=$_GET['urlTitle']

The problem wit this solution is that both links: news-1234.htm and news-my-long-file-name.htm will take to the same file thus creating duplicates of all the current articles and I am not sure it would be a good idea from a SEO perspective as some search engines do not like multiple pages with similar content.

The ideal solution would be a permanent 301 rewrite but after a long time thinking I don’t know how to do it. How do I send news-1234.htm to news-my-long-file-name.htm if both files are actually rewrites and each is based on different columns? Can this actually be done?

Thanks

Tim

dagon

why not only use the new one, and in the 404 file check the url and send them on to the new one if they used an old url

Tim_Silva

sounds good. Could you please tell me a little bit more, perhaps an example on the content of this 404 file? My current 404's are handle also by the htaccess:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.domain.com/help.php

The help.php only has a standard "The page you are looking has moved to a new location. Please go to our home page or use our search engine... blah blah blah"

Thanks

dagon

grab the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] check the db if its a match use header(Location .. to send them off to the new page with a header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");

ok here's my code for what i o in a some what similar situation

top of the 404 file

@db_connection();
@$sql = "SELECT * FROM `redirect` WHERE old='{$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']}' LIMIT 1";
@$result = mysql_query($sql); //or die("Error: " . mysql_error());	
@$count = mysql_numrows($result);


if($count=='1'){
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.eldritchdark.com".$row['new']."");
exit();
}

you will need to extract the id, look up the db to send to the new url

Tim_Silva

So, if i understood it right, I will have to create a new table 'redirect' with a column for the old_url and another for new_url.

In this case, my first job would be to dynamically populate this table, right?

couldn't this be done with a join?

Tim

Tim_Silva

I don't know if it could be done but the idea would be:

$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] and grab the request file name, say: news-1234.htm
extract the 1234 from the file name (this is the id)
use the id to locate the urlTitle column
send the user to news-my-long-file-name.htm where my-long-file-name is the urlTitle column for id 1234

What do you think?

dagon

you need some way to map the old to the new url

news-1234.htm to news-my-long-file-name.htm

i would assume you could look up the 1234 which would provide a title that could be formatted to match news-my-long-file-name.htm

otherwise you need a new able row

Tim_Silva

looks like we were writing at the same time.

So, you're saying it can be done without creating a table. good. But in this case the 404 page would have to give different results to differnt requests. If the file does not exist then the user should get a more generic page.

This is gonna be a long project as I never worked with $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] before.

Any more pointers?

dagon

in my code

if($count=='1'){
there is a id match so redirect to new page
}

No match so generic 404 here