Re-Write Url - assistance needed - advice

kpowning

I have my products page currently for example using: (http://www.mywebsite.com/products.php?catid=4&productid=1) how can I rewrite this to say for example (http://www.mywebsite.com/weddings/black-chair.html)??? I appreciate any advice on this. Thanks in advance...

bradgrafelman

That depends. If you were only given the values "weddings" and "black-chair", could you guarantee a 1-to-1 mapping that turns those into (I'm assuming) 4 and 1, respectively? If so, then one answer might be something like Apache's mod_rewrite:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ([^/]+)/([^\.]+)\.html /products.php?catname=$1&productname=$2

(assuming products.php was modified such that it could accept 'name' versions of the two paramters and convert them into 'id' values as previously mentioned).

kpowning

bradgrafelman;11013067 wrote:
That depends. If you were only given the values "weddings" and "black-chair", could you guarantee a 1-to-1 mapping that turns those into (I'm assuming) 4 and 1, respectively? If so, then one answer might be something like Apache's mod_rewrite:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ([^/]+)/([^\.]+)\.html /products.php?catname=$1&productname=$2
(assuming products.php was modified such that it could accept 'name' versions of the two paramters and convert them into 'id' values as previously mentioned).

What if I can't guarantee a 1-to-1 mapping? What would be the best way to set this up for SEO purposes? Thanks for your advice bradgrafelman....

bradgrafelman

kpowning;11013073 wrote:
What if I can't guarantee a 1-to-1 mapping?

Then you can't do what you're asking. At least, you can't until you invent a webserver with built in AI that can somehow deduce the missing information.

kpowning;11013073 wrote:
What would be the best way to set this up for SEO purposes?

Personally, I still refuse to believe that "pretty URLs" really have that much bearing on search engines. I personally don't care what the URL looks like when I'm searching for something; I'd rather get results that are relevant and widely referenced.

Ashley_Sheridan

bradgrafelman;11013079 wrote:
Personally, I still refuse to believe that "pretty URLs" really have that much bearing on search engines. I personally don't care what the URL looks like when I'm searching for something; I'd rather get results that are relevant and widely referenced.

I'd agree. There are plenty of forums that don't use these "pretty" URLs, and search engines can find them just fine. The benefit is mostly to people who might write these down and re-type it later on a different machine, or be in some other situation where they manually type a URL into their browser. There's little evidence to indicate that search engines give much weighting at all to text in the URL. If it's just SEO benefits you're after, you might be better off spending your time elsewhere, like content.

Lord_Yggdrasill

bradgrafelman;11013067 wrote:
That depends. If you were only given the values "weddings" and "black-chair", could you guarantee a 1-to-1 mapping that turns those into (I'm assuming) 4 and 1, respectively? If so, then one answer might be something like Apache's mod_rewrite:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ([^/]+)/([^\.]+)\.html /products.php?catname=$1&productname=$2
(assuming products.php was modified such that it could accept 'name' versions of the two paramters and convert them into 'id' values as previously mentioned).

Interesting, I like Mod_rewrite too. The idea is to capture the url a user enters, redirects him/her to index.php, then uses a front controller to determine which view to load and finally displays the page with a well-formatted url.

I was wondering though... Let's say the controller can determine whether the user enters a url that belongs to the main site or admin control panel(acp), the rewrite rules may be different. How is php/apache able to figure out which one to use if you have multiple rewrite rules?

bradgrafelman

Lord Yggdrasill;11013263 wrote:
How is php/apache able to figure out which one to use if you have multiple rewrite rules?

You'd probably add some RewriteCond's to the Rule such that it will only be used if the requested path doesn't match an actual file ('!-f') or an actual directory ('!-d').