[thelist] Tricking the Search Engines

aaron,

><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> From: Aaron Johnson
>
> FYI you could/can have ColdFusion & ASP parse .htm
> or.html files on IIS. I'm not sure how you do this on
> Apache, although I'd be interested to know.  On IIS:
>
> start --> programs --> wherever Internet Service Manager
> is --> yourwebsite.com (right click) --> properties -->
> home directory --> configuration --> add .html or .html
> as an application mapping and point that extension to
> the asp.dll (for asp) or the iscf.dll (for CF).  Then
> rename your .asp or .cfm pages as .htm or .html and
> you'll have .htm or .html pages parsed by the
> appropriate app server.
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

i'd like to reiterate what morgan already said -- ew.

all this monkeying around with file extensions is sort of missing the better
solution -- no file extensions at all.  build the site/applications so all
pages appear to sit at the root of directories and the paths end in a slash.
now you're completely platform/file extension agnostic.

here's a fun one:

http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.asp
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.aspx
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.borg
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.cfm
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.css
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.exe
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.gif
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.html
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.jeff
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.jpg
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.js
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.jsp
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.php
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.png
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.sql
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.swf
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.wml
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.xml
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/index.zip
http://evolt.org/user/jeff/15/

so, tell me, what language is the evolt.org cms written in?  you can't tell
from the url can you?  neither can the search engine.  heck, that's a
completely dynamic url to a database driven page.  does the search engine
know that?  no, it thinks it's looking at a directory structure.

so, before you compromise your server's performance, take a look at
solutions that already exist.

good luck,

.jeff

http://evolt.org/
jeff@members.evolt.org
http://members.evolt.org/jeff/