[ic] Bypassing the whole [more] system

Mike Heins interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
Mon Sep 30 10:39:04 2002


Quoting Grant (listbox@email.com):
> I was considering making my own system to handle my product category search
> results, and I was hoping to get your opinions on the idea.
> 
> Currently, my category pages are made up of 1-3 pages of displayed items.
> The searches for the displayed items are done in-page so I have 19 different
> category pages, each page named with its category.  What this results in is
> when a link to a product category is clicked, the URL changes to
> www.mystore.com/cgi-bin/cat/category.html.  The URL is thus very clean and
> when IC 5.0 is released the [mv_tmp_session] feature will allow the URL to
> be perfect for search engine indexing as it will contain no query strings
> (when requested by a spider).  Also, the "category" text in the URL will
> make the page rank higher for a search term such as "category".  However,
> the next 1-2 pages of each category display (Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3),
> which are linked to via [more] tags, have very messy URLs with something
> like this:
> 
> www.mystore.com/cgi-bin/cat/scan/MM=571aedb8936b4d36ae73662be78b10b9:9:17:9?
> mv_session_id=phJTbBEsm&mv_pc=5&mv_more_ip=1&mv_nextpage=page
> 
> I was considering setting up maybe 10 pages per category (they could be
> almost identical, and maybe identical once I really think about it)
> something like this: category_p1.html, category_p2.html, etc.  I could then
> structure the pages myself to only show nine (my match limit) items per page
> and generate the appropriate "Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3" links depending on
> how many items are returned from the in-page category search.  This would
> mean that ALL of my category pages are search-engine friendly for the two
> reasons mentioned above, AND all of my products on their flypages which are
> only linked to in the pages beyond Page 1 of the category pages will be
> indexed when they otherwise would not.
> 
> What do you guys think?

I thought I would respond since no one else has....

I have been thinking about configurable missing-URL routines. Right now,
the default is that if a page is not found, a flypage is tried. If that
is not found, then in 4.9 the DirectoryIndex is tried (allowing index.html
to be the index page for a directory). Then it is passed to the special
page "missing", whatever that is defined to be.

I thought of adding a "PageResolution" directive, i.e.:

    PageResolution   category_page Vend::Interpolate::fly_page

That would allow the Sub/GlobalSub "category_page" to get first crack
at a missing URL, followed by a try at the flypage.

Of course, the most efficient way to do this would be with a
"category" ActionMap, i.e.:

	http://foo.com/cgi-bin/bar/category/Category Name/1.html
	http://foo.com/cgi-bin/bar/category/Category Name/2.html
	http://foo.com/cgi-bin/bar/category/Category Name/3.html

The special "category" causes the ActionMap category to be run,
and the category could be followed. The trailing 2, etc. could
be used for paging.

-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.513.523.7621      <mike@perusion.com>

Be patient. God isn't finished with me yet.  -- unknown