Thread: Search Engines and Dolphin

Hi, tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the search engines do not store articles pages from dolphin sites as individual pages, maybe this does apply to members' profiles also, since their url structure is very alike.

I will like to focus now on articles, if I am correct assuming this, the problem might be that the articles' url look like this: http://sitename/article.php?xx=yy&zz=aa

This problem, if it is as I'm assuming, might be fixed by changing the way the url is shown, maybe by having it like this:
http://sitename/article-title-ID.ext

and the articles' categories page like this:
http://sitename/articles-category-name.ext

and the articles' list pages like this:
http://sitename/articles-list-category-name.ext

or something similar.

I think this is important for the articles section and also for the members' profile pages because as the articles and members increases, the content of the sites increase two so it is important that the search engines can index the site's pages as additional content additions since this might help with rankings because of, obviously, the increasing amount of content and the update frequency.

If I'm wrong assuming that the search engine is not indexing articles and profiles pages correctly because of the url structure of these two sections at dolphin sites, then tell it to me, and tell me why I'm wrong, please, I will appreciate that a lot.

If I'm right, then two obvious question, What I stated above as a possible solution can solve the problem??? and, if yes, how can those modifications be done???

Thanks for your time for reading this, all comments about this will be very appreciated by me and, I think, by everyone with a dolphin site, since Search Engines are very important for anybody with a website business. Take care, bye.

You can make this by using mod-rewrite.

Hi, thank you for your comment GMD, actually I did hear about mod_rewrite, but I was thinking about having the articles title at the search engine friendly url's, that makes it a little more complicated, at least for me, since I'm not a programmer, but I think I will give up about that idea, a whole day trying to figure it out and nothing.

Ok, now, although I think I'm not going to have the articles titles at the url's because of my ignorance about how to do it, actually I have advanced a little with this, I created search engine friendly urls for the individual articles viewing pages with mod_rewrite, not as I wanted them to be, but at least they are search engine friendly, the code is as follows:

at .htaccess file at web directory:

Add:

Code:

# Enable mod_rewrite, start rewrite engine 
Options +FollowSymLinks 
RewriteEngine on 
# 
# Internally rewrite search engine friendly static URL to dynamic filepath and query
RewriteRule ^article-([^-]+)-([^.]+)\.html$ /articles.php?articleID=$1&action=$2 [L] 
# 
# Externally redirect client requests for old dynamic urls to equivalent new static urls
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /articles\.php\?articleID=([^&]+)&action=([^\ ]+)\ HTTP/ 
RewriteRule ^articles\.php$ /article-%1-%2.html? [R=301,L]

Ok, this makes url's like:
http://sitename.ext/articles.php?articleID=25&action=viewarticle

... to look like this:
http://sitename.ext/article-25-viewarticle.html

Now, here is the question:

Now that I have made the search engine friendly url's, is there a way to change all articles links created by the script to this new format without having to manually edit every one of their instances a my text/script editor? How? I read something about preg_replace() but I didn't find the way to apply it (str_replace() might be helpful too, I don't really know)

Maybe there are not many instances for articles links, but since I plan to do this search engine friendly url's conversion at the profiles pages also (and some other sections of the site), knowing how to do this might be critical for not spending too much time changing all the respective links structures manually.

I will appreciate a lot if someone can help me with this, maybe the function getArticlesList( $iCategoryID ) code located at inc/articles.inc.php can be helpful for explaining how changes should be applied to accomplish what I need... or maybe not, I don't know, I really need help here.

Help Please!

Nobody? I can't beleive this...

Long time since the last time I really got help, hope this to change, it's not very helpful if it is just one way.

Still needing help.

I haven't enough time now, but i'll think how to help you

Yea - we are all busy - and it is the holiday in the USA - 4th of July.

Everyone eating hot dogs and drinking beer all over the USA!

And looking out for suspicious packages.

Smoge

Jajaja, didn't expect to read a post with something similar to "I don't have enough time to help right now".

The fact is that everybody is busy, I'm busy too, but I take the time to post solutions for those who have a problem that I know how to solve. It's ok, don't get me wrong, I know some persons are celebrating special dates at some places and others are busy working, taking care of family, etc, etc, it is just that the fact of reading something meaning that people is always busy was a little funny to me because that is something that is always that way now days.

By the way, ok, now getting back to the thread theme, What I was supposing first was that my script generated pages were not been indexed and treated as single different pages by search engines, that was what started this thread in the first place, well I checked again at google to see what was happening with my articles pages (they updated my site's info at their database recently) and yesterday I notice that all my articles pages were listed there as individual pages, so the problem that I assume is not presente, so I think I'm not going to fix anything since nothing is broken.

I know that people say that google give more importance to static pages than to dynamic pages, so it is better to have our dynamic pages presented as static ones, but since, at this moment, what I want is that my pages appear as separate pages for them to reflect the addition of content, I think I will return everything to be as it was before.

At sometime I will have to make my url's engine friendly to increase the sites performace in relation to search engines, but since it seems that what I want the links to look like is a little complicated, and I would want to apply the same changes to profile pages, blog pages, galleries pages and articles pages, plus all the links structures generated by the script pointing to these sections of the site having to be changed for the new format also, I think it would be better to get someone to do that at the moment it really becomes necessary, don't have enough time right now (sounds familiar? jajajaj, just joking) to be dealing with this type of issues when the site is just starting and is not really making any considerable amount of money.

Thank you GMD and Smoge for your postings at this thread, maybe other persons might need the intructions related to this thread to improve their sites, so I think it would be important is you post some solution anyways, although I think I'm not going to be the one using them, at least for this moments.

Take care everyone, bye.

PD: The following comment really made me laugh, jajaja.

Originally Posted by Smoge

And looking out for suspicious packages.