In my previous post I talked about how I was reading into what can be done with mod rewrite files. I was quite amazed at what it is possible to achieve with rewrite files. The output of the work I have done means that the URL http://www.cocktailmaking.co.uk/433-a-strawberry-with-milk.html is just redirecting to http://www.cocktailmaking.co.uk/showcocktail.php?CocktailID=433 on the server but any crawler or visitor can’t tell that.
The methodology for doing this is really very simple with a .htaccess file but to truly do justice to the power of .htaccess will take a lot more than this short blog post. Unfortunately my host decided not to allow me to do this with .htaccess and doesn’t allow the RewriteEngine to run. I therefore had to use the mod rewrite functionality in Zeus.
There was very little documentation for this on the web but over a couple of hours it became clear that the methodology was really similar. Unfortunately I didn’t nail it completely. I had to add a bit of script in the php file to recognize the URL used to call the file and then pull out the variable number (a bit of a hack I know) but it works really well.
I am now planning to change the URL structure linked from the site and do some 301 redirects so that I can get the yahoo value from having the better URL structure without losing the existing Google benefits.
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