[thelist] Indexing by Search Engines of dynamically created documents.

[John Loy]

I'm kind of new to the world of server parsed HTML. I have been 
webmaster for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of 
Virginia for about 4 months and have, up to this point, only dealt 
with static HTML a few CGI scripts and Javascript. I am now charged 
with putting together what will eventually be a fairly formidable 
online periodical about the college and its associated persons. I 
think a server parsed, data-base back system is the way to accomplish 
some of the functionality we'd like to have. There is a problem 
though. If I set things up so that the article text is in a database 
and is flowed into a Cold Fusion or PHP document or such, then how do 
I insure that the major search engines will turn up results that 
point to the articles. It would be nice if someone could go to 
Google, and search UVA for information about the music program and a 
certain notable professor and have articles from our periodical turn 
up in the results. If the article is never actually a real HTML 
document residing somewhere under the site root then how will spiders 
index the stories? If there is a trick to getting these articles 
indexed please let me know.

Thanks so much for your time,

John Loy
Webmaster
Arts & Sciences
University of Virginia
444 New Cabell Hall
804-243-8813
ArtsSciWeb at virginia.edu