[thelist] query string manipulation

[.jeff]

steve,

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> From: Steven Gongage
>
> I'm building a site from the ground up in Coldfusion 5
> on a 2k server running IIS 5.  [...] I came across an
> article about how to "hide" query strings by replacing
> all "&" and "=" with "/", in other words making the
> entire URL look like a long path.
>
> Example:
> http://blah.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=qs&pageaction=add&var1=123
> http://blah.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/qs/pageaction/add/var1/123
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sorry to say, but that's old news.  hidden query strings should, at the very
least, look like this:

http://blah.com/fuseaction/qs/pageaction/add/var1/123

or, at their very best, look like this:

http://blah.com/qs/add/123

notice in both examples there isn't a leading index.cfm right after the
domain name.  that's crucial for some search engines as they've gotten wise
to developers mucking about with the url and replacing the ?, =, and & with
slashes.

the last time this thread took place there were skeptics, but we've been
doing it long enough here at work to know it makes a difference.

here's a couple of sites we've built that use this technique.

http://mtbachelor.com/
http://hystersales.com/
http://bobcatwest.com/
http://ditchwitchnw.com/
http://24-7magazine.com/

i'm not going to give away all of our secrets on how this is accomplished on
iis5, but i will give one big hint that should get you headed in the right
direction -- 404.

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> But in IIS I don't see any way of keeping it from
> resolving the URL and going to the full path other
> than defining all those "directories" and redirecting
> them individualy.  I'm going to have WAY too many
> directories to keep that strait.
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actually, iis shouldn't care about the appended urls.  instead, it should
try to load up the index.cfm in the root of your site.

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> Has anyone tried this on IIS 5?  Is it even possible?
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yes, all the sites above are running on iis5.  so, it's definitely possible.
just to prove my point, here's a couple of sites running off a templated
system we built that use the query strings like you're talking about.  these
are all running on a server running iis5.

http://www.capitaldancesport.com/
http://www.hawaiistarball.com/
http://www.emeraldball.com/
http://www.kingsball.com/
http://www.usdsc.com/

good luck,

.jeff

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