Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] Shorter links solutions

[Ken N. <ke...@co...>]

On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 15:58 -0400, Matthew McNaney wrote:

> After talking with a few people privately (since no one responded here
> *ahem*) I have decided the following.

Before responding, I wanted to know what options are open to us and what
the ultimate goal is...  I have been perusing Apache's mod_rewrite for
ideas...  Here are my two cents worth (any wisecracks asking if I can
afford it will result in a severe kick in the shins).

First, I like short URL's and Eloi's implementation of them.  They give
the illusion of static pages (which helps in search engine rankings) and
are relatively easy to remember.  Kenneth's idea of "shortcuts" is a
good one, but I would rather see short URL's than another core module
and another layer of admin.  I would like to see phpWebsite be KISS
friendly (Keep It Simple Stupid).

Second, without a short URL implementation and methodology, I am not
sure what purpose mod_rewrite rules ultimately serve...  Most (if not
all) search engines index long URL's and generally people do not type in
URL's, they click a link.  For example, how many of us would type in the
link to see the latest update on New Orleans (ie.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/20/rita/index.html) as opposed to
going to cnn.com and clicking the link).

While I am in favor of making a "go forward" decision as opposed to
making no decision, I think we need to do some more research before
making that "go forward" decision.  I have this nagging feeling we are
missing something (perhaps even relatively easy).

Based on the scenario of Matt's first email on the subject:
> index.php?module=webpage&action=view&id=6&page=2

And my desire to have short URL's like:
page6-2.html

Perhaps something like this would work:

RewriteRule ^page([1-9][0-9]*)-([1-9][0-9]*).html$ index.php?module=pagemaster&action=view&id=$1&%{QUERY_STRING}&page=$2&%{QUERY_STRING}

Given that Apache says this on their mod_rewrite page:

"This module uses a rule-based rewriting engine (based on a
regular-expression parser) to rewrite requested URLs on the fly. It
supports an unlimited number of rules and an unlimited number of
attached rule conditions for each rule to provide a really flexible and
powerful URL manipulation mechanism. The URL manipulations can depend on
various tests, for instance server variables, environment variables,
HTTP headers, time stamps and even external database lookups in various
formats can be used to achieve a really granular URL matching." 

I am confident we can find a "simpler" solution.

And to restate, I would like to see short URL implementation and
methodology before moving on to mod_rewrite.

Regards,


-- 
Ken Nordquist
"Did I Do That?"