[RESOLVED] Web structure for large site with clean URLs

[gwerner]

I'll start with my questions.

1. What is the best method for creating an efficient folder and site structure, while also creating URLs that are SEO and user friendly?
2. Is the method I'm using below a good way to go about this?

I'm in the process of building a site that is comprised of mostly static content with some content served from a database. If I had to guess I would say close to a 70/30 mix. The last project I worked on I built it like so:

domain.com/product/index.php?page=pageTitle

The index page was a switch that checked if the pageTitle was acceptable and if so, served that page. If not, it served a default page. Behind the scenes it was actually grabbing a content.php page that contained includes for the header, footer, content and other important global elements.

I've seen different methods for setting up a web site's overall structure and organization. Below are the most common that I'm finding.

1. index.php?page=pageTitle
2. domain.com/productName/
3. domain.com/productName.html

Number 1 is what I'm currently doing, but it doesn't produce the most user friendly URLs. Number 2 and 3 produce easier URLs from the users point of view. Number 2 seems best overall. One could even mix 2 and 3 together if need be.

I've read that I could be using rewrite rules within the htaccess to change my URLs. Before I do that, should I even be building sites like I've explained my method above? Or, should I going about this differently?

Thanks for any insight.

[RiceBurner]

I've started using a nice little htaccess trick that checks to see if the file or directory is available (which it won't be), and then using a redirect php code to grab the url string, analyse it, and then serve up the correct file.

you can use the redirect to pass values into the GET array if you need to. (but the GET string for eg search pages can still be used).

.htaccess:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . redirect.php [L]
</IfModule>

redirect.php (lives in the root folder)

$uv = explode('/',$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]); // GRAB REQUESTED URI AFTER DOMAIN VALUE
foreach($uv AS $i=>$j) { if(empty($j)) unset($uv[$i]); } // CLEAR EMPTY VALUES WITHIN ARRAY
$uv = array_values($uv); // REJIG KEYS WITHIN ARRAY

$a = $uv[0];
$b = (isset($uv[1])) ? $uv[1] : null;
$c = (isset($uv[2])) ? $uv[2] : null;
$d = (isset($uv[3])) ? $uv[3] : null;

switch($b) {
  case'example1':  $_GET['x'] = $b;    break;
  case'example2':  $_GET['x'] = $b;    break;
  case'example3':  $_GET['x'] = $b;    $_GET['y'] = $c;  break; 
}

// SPECIAL CASE
if($a == 'example4') { $_GET['x'] = $b; }

if(is_file($a.".php")) { include($a.".php"); }
else { include("404error.php"); }

Hope that helps.

[cretaceous]

I could be wrong but I think RiceBurner's method wont give good Google results - I'd be interested to know if I'm wrong ..

re o.p.: that's how I do my sites and the urls are like sample 2

(no need to append .html on the end for friendliness, cleaner to look at without it - though if you have old flat pages that may work for you, but you could work around that as well)

of course if you were to use a PHP framework it would do things differently and many might say that is the way to go (e.g codeigniter etc)

[RiceBurner]

Cretaceous - as fas as I know it works fine for google - the url for each page is like this :

http://www.domain.com/pagename/option1/option2/index.html

Where "pagename" is the actual file name of the php file you want to be used, and option1 / option2 etc are your pre-assigned get string variable values. All you have to do is use sensible camel-cased (or hyphenated), descriptive filenames, which also helps you as the developer to know what each file does too. 🙂

[cretaceous]

I was thinking this was triggering a 404 missing page, but you're right..
my htaccess pattern is different in that I push each text chunk between slashes into a query string var..
all comes to much the same by the end - yours looks less trouble

[gwerner]

I'm relatively dense when it comes to learning new material, so I appreciate your help and patience.

I'm not following what the purpose of the switch does in your code? It also looks like the include would only work if the file also existed in the root folder. But, maybe this is just a basic example?

Does this script still work for a structure like:

/root/product1/index.php?page=topic1
/root/product1/index.php?page=topic2
/root/product1/index.php?page=topic3

/root/product2/index.php?page=topic1
/root/product2/index.php?page=topic2
/root/product2/index.php?page=topic3

/root/product3/index.php?page=topic1
/root/product3/index.php?page=topic2
/root/product3/index.php?page=topic3

The topic pages are static content pages. They are not getting their content from a database. Below is the code for an index page.

$allowedPages = array('default', 'detail', 'list'); 
$page = (isset($_GET['page']) && $_GET['page'] != '' && in_array($_GET['page'], $allowedPages)) ? $_GET['page'] : ''; 
switch ($page) { 
    case 'list' : 
        $myid = (!isset($_SESSION['myId']) ? header('Location: /store/account/index.php') : (int)$_SESSION['myId']); 
        $catId = (!isset($_GET['catId']) ? '0' : (int)$_GET['catId']); 
        $content = 'list.php'; 
        $pageTitle = 'PRODUCTS'; 
        break; 

case 'detail' : 
    $myid = (!isset($_SESSION['myId']) ? header('Location: /store/account/index.php') : (int)$_SESSION['myId']); 
    $productId = (!isset($_GET['productId']) ? '1' : (int)$_GET['productId']); 
    $catId = (!isset($_GET['catId']) ? '1' : (int)$_GET['catId']); 
    $content = 'detail.php'; 
    $pageTitle = 'DETAILS'; 
    break; 

default : 
    $footer = 'ON'; 
    $myid = (!isset($_SESSION['myId']) ? header('Location: /store/account/index.php') : (int)$_SESSION['myId']); 
    $catId = (!isset($_GET['catId']) ? '0' : (int)$_GET['catId']); 
    $content = 'default.php'; 
    $pageTitle = 'STORE';

require_once(TEMPLATES_PATH . '/content.php');

}

The $content variable includes a page like:

require_once(LIBRARY_PATH . '/doProcess.php'); 
require_once(TEMPLATES_PATH . '/header.php'); 
require_once($content); 
require_once(TEMPLATES_PATH . '/footer.php'); 

[RiceBurner]

The switch is forcing the initial get string - essentially it's creating a structure of

"http://domain.com/$a.php?x=$b&y=$c"

So the code in $a.php can see a $_GET array of
x=>$b
y=>$c

To do something like your system I would turn it around - have list detail & default pages that are generic, and use $c to specify the product.

So your url would be ([url]http://domain.com)/list/product1/topic2/(index.html[/url])
Then your php could identify the product by var $b, var $a becomes the php file you actually go to in the root structure, and var $c becomes the identifier for the topic.

Within the list.php you then include() the necessary generic files you need to build the page (libraries etc) - but the specific code for that functionality (making a list) is in that page.

The index.html isn't strictly necessary, nor is the domain, but the "/" is, because the browser will "think" the page is coming from an "index" directory within the root dir. You also need to ensure that your css/js and img files are referenced back via root too.

[samuelcook]

Just if anyone is curious, if you use htaccess to use url rewrites you will want to make sure that you use "200 OK" header in your "template" file. otherwise it will output as 404 Not Found

[RiceBurner]

Cheers for that samuel.

One question - what's the easiest way to check what the headers are? Can they be output to the html?

[gwerner]

Thanks for that. I'm following you. Last question. It looks like my web directory structure is going to need to change to accommodate this if I'm following you correctly.

With your method

root/
  list.php
  detail.php
  default.php
  redirect.php
assets/
  templates/
    header.php
    footer.php

What I'm doing currently

root/
redirect.php
product1/
  index.php
  default.php
  list.php
  detail.php
assets/
  templates/
    header.php
    footer.php

[RiceBurner]

gwerner;10981040 wrote:

Thanks for that. I'm following you. Last question. It looks like my web directory structure is going to need to change to accommodate this if I'm following you correctly.

With your method

root/
  list.php
  detail.php
  default.php
  redirect.php
assets/
  templates/
    header.php
    footer.php

What I'm doing currently

root/
redirect.php
product1/
  index.php
  default.php
  list.php
  detail.php
assets/
  templates/
    header.php
    footer.php

yeah - that's pretty much the case (I keep template files in a root/template/ directory for simplicity).

[gwerner]

Ok. I think I got it. Thanks for the help.

[samuelcook]

i use the Web developer toolbar, its a firefox add-on

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-developer/

Click Information->View Response Headers

This will output the headers for the page.

[RiceBurner]

samuelcook;10981054 wrote:

i use the Web developer toolbar, its a firefox add-on

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-developer/

Click Information->View Response Headers

This will output the headers for the page.

Aha! thanks!

Just had a quick look on the site I've got that uses the process, and the headers come out with 200 OK. 🙂 (without that having been deliberately set in the php).