[ic] new idea, feedback please

[Kevin Walsh]

Grant [listbox@email.com] wrote:
> I think I may have come up with a way that would work for me to keep my URLs
> search engine friendly.  I do have a couple questions though, so please let
> me know what you guys think.
> 
> The idea is to write a new usertag to replace the area tag.  It would check
> to see if the page argument is AlwaysSecure or not and write either http://
> or https:// based on that, then __SERVER_NAME__, then __CGI_URL__, then
> /(pageargument).html.  That would keep id= and mv_pc= out of the generated
> links and the search engine spiders would then be able to traverse all of
> the links.  I would always use the new tag to generate links, and cookies
> would just be required to shop at my store.  Here are my questions:
> 
> 1. Will not having mv_pc= functionality cause a problem?  I realize it is
> there to prevent browser page-caching.  If it's not there, will users be
> viewing old versions of my pages after I've updated them?
> 
> 2. Does anyone see any possible problems caused by setting up a system like
> this?
> 
Interchange 4.9 has this functionality built in.  It will spot spiders,
either by user agent or by IP address, and will assign a "temporary
session".  Temporary sessions will not be saved and tags that generate
URIs ([area], [page], [process] etc.) will not include arguments such
as mv_pc or mv_session_id.

You could backport this functionality into 4.8 and earlier versions,
or could hire a consultant to do this work for you.

Your method would work except for a few points:

  1. A lot of your pages would have to be modified to use the new tag,
     which could amount to a lot of work.

  2. The tag would rely on the SERVER_NAME and CGI_URL variables being
     present and correct.  The [area]-style tags don't use those
     variables at all.

  3. All visitors would be affected, not just spiders, which would mean
     that Interchange would have no means of maintaining a user's
     session if the user disabled the use of cookies for any reason.

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