Benefits of URL rewriting

[fluiduk]

Hi All

Working on our site at work, cant mention the name on here. At the moment the site uses horrible URLS ie product_details.asp?id=blahblah or category.asp?catid=blflfrlf&subcatid=dasdasdasd

Now I want to rewrite these to nice urls, ie www.mydomain.com/products/productcode

I am trying to justify the work to my boss and need some help thinking of good reasons lol

So far I have;

1. Future proofing
2. More SEO friendly
3. More user friendly

Can you guys think of any more

Ta
Aaron

 

[JonD]

1. Easy to understand
2. Seach Engine Optimisation
3. Security (See below)
4. Must be others

Say you have a link:

index.php?page=news&id=23

Now any hacker knows that page and id is a variable so they could try to do whatever to hack the site. But if your write it as:

/news/23/

They now have no idea what the variables are called to they cant try to hack.

 

[toString]

Sorry to go OT... But out of interest, how do you go about doing this? When ever I've seen sites with URL's like that I assume they've gone to lengths of making folders and subfolders, which is obviously not right..

 

[iCraig]

Better presentation too.

"/products/2"

looks far better than a steam of variables and numbers.

 

[JonD]

Sorry to go OT... But out of interest, how do you go about doing this? When ever I've seen sites with URL's like that I assume they've gone to lengths of making folders and subfolders, which is obviously not right..

Here is a subset from a gaming site im making, its really quite easy. Just write a .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^news/?$			index.php?p=news
RewriteRule ^news/([0-9]+)/?$		index.php?p=news&id=$1
RewriteRule ^scenenews/?$		index.php?p=scenenews
RewriteRule ^scenenews/([0-9]+)/?$	index.php?p=scenenews&id=$1
RewriteRule ^roster/?$			index.php?p=roster
RewriteRule ^roster/([0-9]+)/?$		index.php?p=roster&id=$1
RewriteRule ^matches/?$			index.php?p=matches
RewriteRule ^matches/([0-9]+)/?$	index.php?p=matches&id=$1
RewriteRule ^forum/?$			index.php?p=forum
RewriteRule ^sponsors/?$		index.php?p=sponsors
RewriteRule ^sponsors/([0-9]+)/?$	index.php?p=sponsors&id=$1
RewriteRule ^awards/?$			index.php?p=awards
RewriteRule ^awards/([0-9]+)/?$		index.php?p=awards&id=$1
RewriteRule ^demos/?$			index.php?p=demos
RewriteRule ^demos/([0-9]+)/?$		index.php?p=demos&id=$1
RewriteRule ^media/?$			index.php?p=media
RewriteRule ^media/([0-9]+)/?$		index.php?p=media&id=$1
RewriteRule ^interviews/?$		index.php?p=interviews
RewriteRule ^interviews/([0-9]+)/?$	index.php?p=interviews&id=$1

 

[Una]

Sorry to go OT... But out of interest, how do you go about doing this? When ever I've seen sites with URL's like that I assume they've gone to lengths of making folders and subfolders, which is obviously not right..

Check out http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html.