NetHosted Community

Hi folks
I'm having problems getting search engines to index some of the pages on my website, for example
http://www.cgf.net/plants.php?genus=DAP ... y=MEZEREUM

I have literally 1000s of pages generated in this manner, all with worthwhile content as well. The only trouble is Google just ignores them. I tried generating a sitemap for Google a couple of months back to no effect.
I think I need to make my URLs more search engine friendly - but where do I start?

I would be grateful for any assistance

_________________
Kev Maggs
Part-time webdesigner - www.cynara.co.uk

Kev,

You want to look into mod_rewrite definitely. Using this you could change the above url into something much more bot friendly such as:

www.cgf.net/plants/DAPHNE/MEZEREUM

Using mod_rewrite we can have page urls such as:

http://community.nethosted.co.uk/topic1 ... _urls.html

I've just put together a mod_rewrite rule so that when you follow the above link it will take you to the appropriate page no matter what genus or variety you use. You currently must use capital letters (due to the way your system works). Here is the rule that I have implemented on your site:

RewriteRule ^plants/([A-Z]*)/([A-Z]*) plants.php?genus=$1&variety=$2 [L,NC]

Thanks,

Andrew

_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
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Thanks andrew.
I'd come across mod_rewrite rules whilst searching, but to be honest I didn't understand what it was all about, and it still leaves me a bit bewildered.

do I need to submit a new sitemap to google?

If this works, I take it that people will find the following link on google www.cgf.net/plants/DAPHNE/MEZEREUM

Looking at the page, I will need to change the way my links work (including stylesheet), from being having relative URLs to to absolute addresses. If that makes sense?

Thanks again

_________________
Kev Maggs
Part-time webdesigner - www.cynara.co.uk

_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
| Earn £30 every time you refer someone to us!
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_________________
"I have made this letter long, only because I lacked the time to make it short." - Blaise Pascal 1657

_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
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Andrew,

Pah! For you don't need these namby-pamby new languages and utilities, just a C (pre)compiler and the .

Regards,

Pete

PS Sorry Kev. You can have your thread back soon.

_________________
"I have made this letter long, only because I lacked the time to make it short." - Blaise Pascal 1657

_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
| Earn £30 every time you refer someone to us!
| Follow us on Twitter:
| Members, tell us what of NetHosted!

_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
| Earn £30 every time you refer someone to us!
| Follow us on Twitter:
| Members, tell us what of NetHosted!

i have created a site map and submitted to google many months ago using.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
My site has a lot of semi-unique content so it is easy to check, if the pages have been listed.The complicated urls with more than one '&' don't seem to have been indexed.

There are three varibles in my Encyclopedia (Genus, Variety & Cultivar)
The last two do not always appear, so I will sometimes get two slashes together //. Anyone know if this will cause a problem?
http://www.cgf.net/test/plants/GALIUM/ODORATUM//
http://www.cgf.net/test/plants/ILEX/AQU ... 0MILKBOY'/
The problem that I'm having is after you go to say the link above and try getting another plant from the option box, you end up with a horrible mess, which doesn't work proper - plants.php isn't mentioned in my webpage code, but is coming from the mod_rewrite somehow. if that makes sense!
The relevant section from the htaccess file is
RewriteRule ^plants/([A-Z]*)/([A-Z]*)/([A-Z]*) plants.php?genus=$1&variety=$2&cultivar=$3 [L,NC]

_________________
Kev Maggs
Part-time webdesigner - www.cynara.co.uk

_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
| Earn £30 every time you refer someone to us!
| Follow us on Twitter:
| Members, tell us what of NetHosted!

_________________
Kev Maggs
Part-time webdesigner - www.cynara.co.uk

_________________
| Andrew Bassett
| Managing Director, NetHosted Ltd.
| Earn £30 every time you refer someone to us!
| Follow us on Twitter:
| Members, tell us what of NetHosted!