Dynamic php pages and search engines

Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2003 11:43 am (20 years, 10 months ago)

i have just converted an exisiting review site to php/mysql. so most of the content is now dynamic e.g. a review "template" reviews.php is filled with relevant content based on the review id parameter passed e.g. reviews.php?id=1

now, i have used some url rewriting to make the urls look static so that reviews.php?id=x is referenced via reviewsx.html and will also use another rule to make index.html redirect to index.php when the new version is ready to go live.

i wanted to include a site search engine and put the code for the free one from http://atomz.com on the site. but when i crawled the site none of the new dynamic pages were indexed!!

obviously, if atomz won't pick them up i'm thinking google etc will not either and then there is no way i can use the new version at all Sad

basically, i'm completely new to all this and i'm hoping i have just set up the url rewriting wrong or something!

on the other hand i find it hard to see how the content can be indexed when there are no permanent static pages there to follow - do i need to make a static version of a site index? how would i do that??

to see how the php/mysql version is set up at the moment visit http://www.eclectichoney.com/index.php and follow the links. (the old version is still the main one at http://www.eclectichoney.com).

can anyone help clear up my confusion??

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Yes, some search engines ignore dynamic pages. However I have written a tutorial on mod_rewrite which lets you rewrite URLs to be search engine friendly:

http://www.4webhelp.net/tutorials/misc/mod_rewrite.php

When you crawled your site using Atomz, are you sure you gave it index.php as a home page? Otherwise it wouldn't be able to find your new dynamic pages...

Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2003 1:09 pm (20 years, 10 months ago)

Thanks a million daniel - I hadn't specified index.php as an entrypoint! I can be so thick sometimes!! I'm just grateful it was something so simple...

I had found your tutorial really useful in trying to work out the URL rewriting in the first place, so thanks for that. In fact, I wish I had found this site a lot sooner because the tuts are so helpful - the one about setting up a local server is another favourite - I love the colour coding Very Happy

Thanks again!

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

I figured there must be something wrong with that, since we use Atomz for 4WebHelp's search engine, and it has no trouble indexing dynamic pages (we excluded the printer-friendly pages and forums though otherwise we'd be over the 500 page limit).

However I would consider modifying your URLs otherwise many search engines will just ignore them Sad

.

Anyway, glad you got it sorted Very Happy

Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 4:39 pm (20 years, 10 months ago)

btw, since you mentioned it, google is one of the few search engines that will index dynamic pages.

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

As far as I know Google only indexes dynamic pages in limited numbers though, due to the potential of going round in circles (with a session ID in the URL or something).

Take a look at the results for a search for "Google index dynamic pages" Laughing

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=en&q=Google+index+dynamic+pages

Junior WebHelper Joined: 18 Jul 2003 Posts: 7

Daniel,

I took your tutorial, but it dont work, please help

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/category/([0-9]+)$ /category.php?node=$1

thats what i have, and its not going...i have no idea why
plz help

Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2003 10:16 am (20 years, 9 months ago)

I know this is a bit old but phpBuilder.com have an article on Building Dynamic Pages With Search Engines in Mind check it out... http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20000526.php3

Thanks,

Norm Very Happy

Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2003 12:45 pm (20 years, 9 months ago)

Odhinn wrote:

btw, since you mentioned it, google is one of the few search engines that will index dynamic pages.

http://www.alltheweb.com seems to do a better job on dynamic pages than google

Senior WebHelper Joined: 21 Apr 2003 Posts: 153

Does anyone know where I could find a tutorial on making dynamic pages?

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2003 4:31 pm (20 years, 9 months ago)

I don't know for sure, but Webmonkey is always a good place to look.