SE Friendly Dynamic Content

[davva]

Hi

I have been testing out this script http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici...ajaxrotate.htm for a site I am developing. I dont know much about programming, but got it to work for my site.

The thing is the content from the external file that it loads does not get displayed within the source code, so search engines will not be able to see this.

Is there a work around for this, or can someone point me in the right direction to what I am trying to achieve

thanks

[spinal007]

Use a server-side language to achieve the same effect.
How you do it will depend on the language you can use:
ASP (VBScript), ASP (JScript), PHP, CFM, etc...

[davva]

Thanks for the reply, I would like to use .php, but like I said I dont really know to much about it, can you supply me with any info or links?

thanks

[spinal007]

I don't program in php either, I really don't know much...
but here's a start:
http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp

[ukgeoff]

The process of using the script seems pretty straight forward.

Have you followed the instructions to the letter? Particularly the bit about the location of the files to be included.

Can you supply some basic tech specs for your client-sever set-up?

[davva]

Hi

Like I said I have got it to work, but was wondering is there alternative ways of what I am trying to achieve that will make the dynamic content visible to Search Engines, if you look a the example I gave and view the source code you will not see the text for the dynamic bit.

Any ideas guys?

[davva]

all I know is that it can host php, if you need anymore info please let me know

[ukgeoff]

You could write your dynamic text into a number of files with an extension of say .inc or you could store the text as records in a database.

Use php's rand() function to pick a file or database record and then include that text in the appropriate place in your page code.

[davva]

Thanks for the reply, I will need the blocks of text to change daily, I am a newbie to PHP so any help in the right direction would be so helpful!

[ukgeoff]

How many blocks of text are there going to be?

Where does this text originate from?

Is the nature of the text such that it has a 'shelf-life'?

Do you want the text to be chosen on a daily basis, ie., that day's text?

Answering questions like these is going to influence how you go about things.

[davva]

okay, thanks ukgeoff, this is what I need http://www.designholidays.co.uk/page...frica/preview/ the 3 horiz rows opposite feature highlight need to rotate on a daily basis.

There is no shelf life

The text will be getting pulled from the site itself that I supply, so no need for external docs.

Does that help?

[ukgeoff]

A few observations first:

You need to look at your layout as the three rows to which you refer do not resolve properly in Firefox and Opera so I'm guessing other browsers (not IE) will have a similar problem.

You have two empty <label> tags.

I would be inclined to set up a database that held the short text, either a link to the thumbnail or the thumbnail itself and a link to the full page.

You then have a div that is going to contain your three pieces and within that, you place a call to a php function which will generate the content.

That function will need to:

• examine the database to find how many records there are
• run the rand(1, maxrecords) function three times
• keep a record of the record id so as to generate three different numbers
• extract each of the record details in turn and build each section, probably as a div in its own right
• return the built code to the containing div

How does that sound?

[davva]

Hi ukgeoff, yeah I knwo about the layout probs in FF, I will fix that.

What you have suggested sounds like what I need, but at the same time what you have mentioned is way over my level of understanding, any example you could offer would really help me to learn.

thanks again

[Ryan Fait]

When I first started learning PHP, I turned to http://phpfreaks.com/

They've got a number of tutorials and an extremely active forum.

[davva]

Thanks I will give it a try