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Article:
Get PHP pages indexed in the Search engines by: Michael Medeiros A simple method to convert files from Php to Html Extensions, on an Apache Server Most will agree Php has become the common language for creating dynamic Websites. Although the language is simple and efficient, developers are finding trouble getting traffic to their Php site. It is believed by many educated Search Engine Optimization Specialists that spiders do not read beyond the, '.php,' on a URL. Therefore, dynamic pages that pass a variable will be overlooked. For example, on a PHP directory, variables may be passed to a file as, 'index.php?category=x'. In this instance, the category specified as 'x' will not be read or indexed by Search Engines. Spiders will open the parent page (index.php). This is supported by the belief that nothing is read beyond the '?', thus making all category links, 'index.php'. While many dynamic Websites still receive modest traffic, it may be in a developers' best interest to allow some, or all, dynamic pages to be seen as well. Having two pages indexed may not double a sites' traffic, but it will ensure a noticeable increase. Developers' can easily overcome this problem, if their Site resides on an Apache Server. This simple fix will satisfy the problem for a simple script, as in the example above, where one or more Php files are passed variables to perform different functions. Bare in mind, if a Php file only performs one task, this is not required. Files that perform a task without the '?variable=x' being required will be indexed. Therefore, it would be useless to transform them to a Static URL (HTML File). Identify the Php File Needing to be changed to an Html First, identify the desired file, or files, that require the change, along with the variables that generate a common page. Generally, this may be, 'index.php'. To help readers follow along, I am going to utilize the above Directory example. On our Directory program, we have a main page, 'index.php,' which always displays links to Subdirectories. The subdirectories are opened by passing a variable to the index file. For example, a subcategory called, 'Arts and Crafts,' is displayed with, 'index.php?category=1'. Additional subcategories are displayed with an identical syntax, but the end variable changes. Because of this, we need to modify the way our server opens the index.php file, when a variable is attached. Next, we need to place a simple .htaccess file in the directory where, 'index.php,' is located on the server. The .htaccess file is a simple text file that we name .htaccess. Vdeck users may need to create a file named something.txt, and then rename the file to .htaccess, from the admin panel. Now we need to specify some variables to the server. For this example, I am going to change the, '?category=x,' variable to, 'directory-x.html'. This step will eliminate our problem of having the subcategories noticed by Search Engine Spiders. To start our server variables, we need to create a rewrite engine in the .htaccess file. Simply put our first line will read, 'RewriteEngine On'. This tells the server we are changing the way certain files are to be handled. No we need to specify our Rewrite rule. On the next line, 'RewriteRule ^directory-([0-9]*).* index.php?category=$1 [L,NC],'. This is delegating, 'requests to this directory, where the file is named, 'directory-,' followed by a range of 0 to '9
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