[UPHPU] Rewriting Apache URLs

[Walt Haas]

"Jon Jensen" <jon at jenseng.com> wrote:

> To elaborate on what Jeff said, two major benefits are SEO and usability.
> Having relevent keywords in a url can go a long way to helping your rankings
> in the search engines.
> 
> e.g. http://somesite/microsoft/windows/xp.html is much better than
> http://somesite/product.php?id=123
> 
> I've got quite a bit of personal experience with this.... For example,
> http://www.saltlakemotorsports.com has seen a dramatic increase in organic
> traffic since we changed the product page URL's using mod_rewrite (e.g.
> /ducati-daytona-long-sleeved-t-shirt.html).
> 
> As for usability, it makes for URL's that are easier to remember, and it
> also makes for guessable URL's ... Say you're on a blog w/ the URL
> http://someblog/archive/2005/01/ ... If you want to see if there were posts
> in 1/2002, a quick way would be to simply change the URL.
> 
> While mod_rewrite has a learning curve and can seem like voodoo at first, it
> is definitely worth taking the time to figure out.
> 
> Jon

I know mod_rewrite pretty well but as a software developer I'm
reluctant to write software that requires the installer to use
mod_rewrite for the following reasons: 1) the learning curve
2) some sites are hosted on systems that don't support that type of
configuration by the customer.

How do you think it would be to have something like:

http://www.saltlakemotorsports.com/index.php?prod=ducati-daytona-long-sleeved-t-shirt

TIA  -- Walt
-------
Walt Haas          The Web Site Doctor - Cures Sick Web Sites
(801) 534-1262     http://thewebsitedoctor.net