Articles, PHP and search engines

atlaskid · #1 (**permalink**) Dec 17th, 2006, 20:55

Hey

Im making a site full of articles. I made a CMS which stores the articles in a DB, and then theyre displayed by... displayarticle.php?id=XX

See what I mean? My Q is that, will search engines still pick up on my long articles ifits done like this? Because the article will be DB'ed and oly display through that. It important to me that things like MSN, which uses word relevance, finds my articles. How do other sites containing articles do it?

Thanks

Ryan Fait · #2 (**permalink**) Dec 18th, 2006, 11:25

I believe Google does not index ID's. Don't do this! There are way better ways to go about it. My favorite is using something like this:

http://domain.com/?/todays-news/

I use this code to handle complex $_GET variables. It's splits it all up by the forward slashes and corrects the position if there isn't a slash in front or at the end.

PHP: Select all


$home = "/news/";

if(count($_GET) == 0) {
    header("Location: .?".$home);
    exit();
}

$location = explode("/", key($_GET));

if($location[0] == "")
    array_shift($location);
if($location[count($location) - 1] == "")
    array_pop($location);

atlaskid · #3 (**permalink**) Dec 18th, 2006, 15:08

Hey, Thanks for reply

I dont really get how that works. Any tutorials you can find (i dont know what to search for). Would my info still be stored in a database?

masonbarge · #4 (**permalink**) Dec 18th, 2006, 15:08

No they don't, and it really sucks because that is such a great way to do a site full of articles.

I'm facing the same problem. One solution is to just upload out a bunch of text-only (i.e. super-small file) html pages with the text and appropriate <head> entries and put the links somewhere they aren't too noticed, with maybe an indication that these are text-only.

You think you have problems? All my links are automatically generated by php as well as the content!

atlaskid · #5 (**permalink**) Dec 18th, 2006, 15:15

^^ Unlucky. I think I might just go back to plain HTML pages and do it manually (uuughhh), but hopefully Ryan can help me out

Ryan Fait · #6 (**permalink**) Dec 19th, 2006, 12:38

Basically, what that script does is it takes everything after the question mark and organizes it. Say you had an article format like this:

yoursite.com/?/2006/12/19/the-title-of-the-article/

You could use the code I gave you to query a database based on the information after the question mark. It looks like a directory path, but it's really just info PHP can read.

In the above URL, here is what the array values would be using the script in my previous post:

$location[0] = 2006
$location[1] = 12
$location[2] = 19
$location[3] = the-title-of-the-article

The last two if statements make it work even if there are some mistakes in the path, like missing the leading or trailing slash. Understand?

I believe URL's should tell a visitor where they are on a site, so aside from the question mark, a user can figure out where they are.

atlaskid · #7 (**permalink**) Dec 19th, 2006, 14:34

Ahhh, thanks! Do search engines index pages like that yeah? Even if my articles are stored in a DB?

Thanks again

atlaskid · #8 (**permalink**) Dec 19th, 2006, 16:38

Hey

Are there any tutorials on this? All I can find is 'mod_rewrite', surely its not that much of a hassle to be picking around in APache files?

Thanks

Ryan Fait · #9 (**permalink**) Dec 20th, 2006, 01:49

Yeah, they index them. I'm merely talking about PHP. You shouldn't be looking in Apache...

atlaskid · #10 (**permalink**) Dec 20th, 2006, 16:57

Hey

Got it sorted. I used mod_rewrite in my .htaccess file, so that like... domain.com/articles/XX.html would be the same as domain.com/articles?id=XX.

Ty

Ryan Fait · #11 (**permalink**) Dec 21st, 2006, 10:04

Oh, I get it. Why not use the titles of the articles, though?

atlaskid · #12 (**permalink**) Dec 21st, 2006, 14:51

Meh, its easier to use ID for me.

Cause Im using something like...

Code: Select all

$id = 1;

while (blah blah)
{
 echo "Link: Article  $id";
$id++;
}

So that a list of articles is shown. I just find it easier to work with numbers to be ordered than names and stuff.

Ryan Fait · #13 (**permalink**) Dec 23rd, 2006, 13:38

Look, with just a small amount of code, you could transform the title into a string using simply lowercase letters and hyphens. Both Google and visitors appreciate readable URL's. You're making a gigantic mistake by using meaningless numbers. Shortcuts are awesome, but don't hurt your site this badly by taking one.

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Articles, PHP and search engines