Re: Re: [thelist] SEO

On Sat, May 14, 2005 12:25 am, john@johnallsopp.co.uk said: >> For example: >> >> mysite/sweaters/ >> >> (I think) is better than: >> >> mysite/index.php?section=1&content=23&style=5. > > It's more usable I guess. What handles that though? I'm finding it > hard to organise the back end of that in my head. > > I don't think there's any way around that ending up looking for an > index file in the sweaters directory. So then you're ending up with > lots of index files. Maybe they could redirect to the one program that That's where you are wrong. :-) 'sweaters' isn't a directory. It's not even a file. It's a URL. The file that *handles* that URL is index.php You do NOT have a one-to-one mapping from URL to file, nor even from what looks like a directory to a URL. Consider these pages: http://uncommonground.com/artist_profile/Ellen+Rosner http://uncommonground.com/artist_profile/gray http://uncommonground.com/artist_profile/TRAIN http://uncommonground.com/artist_profile/David+Gray You don't think I build 2000 of those things, do you? artist_profile is the PHP script. It tears apart $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] and figures out which artist you want, or gives you a list to choose from if more than one matches. Another most excellent example of this kind of thing can be found all over: http://cdbaby.com/ Every URL you surf to there is really a PHP script. I dunno which ones he's got in actual directories, and which ones are actually PHP scripts, but I don't care. I can remember the URL, which is all I, as the user, cares about. -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm