[thelist] Issues with Apache Multiviews and AOL

[Joshua Olson]

> From: Alvaro Medina G.
> Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 9:53 AM
>
> When pointing to a directory rather than a specific page, you should write
> your links with a slash a the end, like this:
>
> <a href="about/">

Alvaro makes a good point here.  In general, it is good practice to end all
requests for the default document within a folder with a /.  When a browser
requests a resource folder that doesn't end in /, the server sends a
redirect to the browser with the / appended.  So, instead of making 1
request for the resource 2 requests are made.

Example from my log files:

2004-02-17 14:58:40 192.168.0.101 GET /products - 80 - 24.214.45.224
Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.0;+.NET+CLR+1.0.3705;+.NET+C
LR+1.1.4322) - 301 0 0 351 469
2004-02-17 14:58:40 192.168.0.101 GET /products/index.cfm - 80 -
24.214.45.224
Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.0;+.NET+CLR+1.0.3705;+.NET+C
LR+1.1.4322) - 200 0 0 14215 470

You'll notice that the first call generates a 301 and the second call
finally gets the 200.

<tip type="links" author="Joshua Olson">
Always end your links to default documents with the trailing slash to avoid
duplicate calls (the first generating a 301 and the second generating a 200)
by the browser.

Example:

(bad)
http://www.example.com/products

(good)
http://www.example.com/products/
</tip>

<><><><><><><><><><>
Joshua Olson
Web Application Engineer
WAE Tech Inc.
http://www.waetech.com/service_areas/
706.210.0168