FURLs
What are Friendly URLs?
When we say friendly URLs what we really mean is 'search engine friendly URLs'. Search engines generally do not do a good job at spidering sites where pages are all something like index.php?id=123. To combat this, we need to generate a different name for each page.
This needs to be handled from two ends:
- we need to get etomite to generate links which use a different name per page, rather than using a parameter to indentify the page.
- we need to get the web server to redirect these page names back to etomite's parser (index.php) rather than just reporting that the file doesn't exist.
Etomite provides an inbuilt mechanism for generating a different name for each page, so that helps us deal with the first requirement.
We also need to configure the webserver, and the first webserver to permit this sort of redirection was the open-source Apache web server. Etomite comes with a standard file that can be used to enable the functionality we need on most Apache server configurations. The Apache mod-rewrite module is the component that performs the magic of transforming a request from one form to another, and the file that controls this is the .htaccess file.
We need to deal with both of these - if we don't generate the links in the first place, nothing will ever try to use them; but if we don't have a server process that can handle them, they'll never end up delivering the correct page.
For those not using Apache web servers, there are a couple of other options that are covered in outline later in this section, but first we'll cover the basics with the tools supported directly by etomite.
Planning
Friendly URLs are an option that can be enabled using the Etomite manager. There are three options that can be set once friendlu URLs are enabled:
- prefix - a short string that goes in front of the document id when making the page name
- suffix - a short string that goes at the end of the document id, usually something like ".htm"
- alias - you can use the document alias rather than the id (and this will be combined with any prefix and suffix you have defiined)
It is best to use aliasses, because these can be meaningful names. Putting a meaningful name in the page name can help in getting better search engine results, as it indicates quite strongly what a page is about. Search engines may take the hint!
It is also a good idea to use a suffix such as ".htm". It makes it easier to write a more precise matching rule in the Apache .htaccess file.
The prefix is generally of limited use, but might be used if for some reason you can't use aliasses. (There is also another special case where the prefix may be used that is covered in the Friendly URLs - other ways subsection.)
Using Aliases
You can assign an alias to a document, such as `sitemap`, and use that as URI: yoursite/sitemap will point to the page you aliased. Make sure you don't give more than one document the same alias, that you don't use a number as an alias, and that the alias is not the name of an existing folder. It may seem obvious to use 'home' as the alias for your home page - resist the temptation and use index instead (this will be better for search engines!)