[theforum] weo progress - testing please!

[John Handelaar]

Jeff Howden wrote:
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>>7) URL mapping to support existing URLs and keyphrases.
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> 
> What about the plans to support SEO links for new content?  Are we sticking
> with /node/####/, /taxonomy/term/####?  Doing so *will* damage our
> placement.  

I agree it would, but I had no intention of letting those URLs
be the defaults before we let it fly.

No, /node/numeric cannot be the default for new articles, and
from your existing DB I can add the correct aliases to Drupal's
alias table programatically for previously-existing content.
[Indeed, I did so for the PoC previously.]

We will not 404 previously-existing URLs.


> Are there plans to simply map URLs as they exist on weo
> currently to support links out in the wild or is the plan to do the *right*
> thing and take a regex approach so we can support all manner of
> /article/foo/17/28553/, /article/shite/20/60393/,
> /article/Usable_Forms_for_an_international_audience/4090/15118/index.html,
> etc.?  

URLs with random fixtures like 'foo' and 'shite' above should be
a mod-rewrite thing, which is indeed regex-driven.  As a general
principle though I don't see the need to include cruft in new URLs -
I'm sure you'll tell me if you think I'm wrong, but the numeric
category id and the /article/ part of the URL serve no useful purpose
that I can discern and should not be added to new material.

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>>   Incidentally, the new site is doing rather well in
>>Google visibility, considering it has no PageRank
>>whatsoever: [...]
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> 
> Actually, it only seems to be doing "rather well" because you included
> "evolt" in the search terms.  However, search for a more generic search
> phrase that normally brings an evolt.org article to the first page of search
> results and teo articles are nowhere to be found.
> 
> http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=javascript+harmony

Well, yeah.  But when TEO becomes WEO that becomes moot, rather.  I
think Martin's pointing out that the semantics are OK on first
inspection - TEO is outperforming offsite links to those articles
on the evolt+query queries which is a good early sign.

Obviously if it didn't we'd have a bigger problem :-)


jh