URL rewrite software option

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SportsGuy

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Joined: Aug 30, 2002

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Posted: 02/21/2006 05:37 am

OK gang - I need some help on an old topic.

After investing a few bucks in a product, and time from one of my Programing gals, I now realize the software we bought cannot do what we wanted.

Namely, to rewrite complex URLs to appear as simple ones in the address bar.

This would be SO SIMPLE if I could use an .htaccess file, but, you know Windows...LOL *cries*

Here's what we thought would work:

qwerksoft.com/products/iisrewrite/

One of their support guys tells me this product does not, in fact, rewrite URLs "on the fly" as their website states. I'm back & forth with him right now to try and sort through it all. Could me my technical knowledge not understanding something, could be a junk product...wrong version, etc.

FWIW, we're running Windows Server 2003, we have hundreds, if not thousands, of URLs to deal with and asking our SysAdmin to enter URLs to rewrite on the server is out of the question. A programmer, however, I can access...

In any event - I need to know about any other rewrite tools which can take a dynamic URL, when called, and send out a pre-constructed static URL in it's place for the users to view, etc.

I do not expect the software to CREATE the staitc URL, just replace "dynamic A" with "static A" when a page is called up.

Thanks guys - I appreciate the help with this. It's a stalled project which I need moving again quickly... sad

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g1smd

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Joined: Jul 28, 2002

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Posted: 02/21/2006 05:45 am

An ASP script sending out response.header data can probably do the job (just like PHP can send out header data).

Don't ask me to write it!

In Apache, there is a way to auto-run a PHP (or whatever) script before sending any HTML page out, for any URL that is asked for. If IIS also supports that (for ASP), then you are good to go.

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SportsGuy

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Posted: 02/21/2006 05:50 am

Anyone see any issues with the engines going the route G1 suggests may work?

Part of this project entails making the URLs easier to spider.

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Prowler

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Joined: Aug 14, 2000

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Posted: 02/21/2006 06:49 am

>>Anyone see any issues with the engines going the route G1 suggests may work?

Yes. I am afraid it is not that simple. Running a ASP script to 'paraphrase" the dynamic URL into a static URL is a solution which happens after the 'event'. In the case of Apache's Mod_rewrite, the engine which listens to the client's request 'transparently' serves the desired page without invoking an additional process. This saves on server overhead to a large extent.

If you fork additional process - if you run a server-side script to 'translate' the URLs to more Search engine friendly ones, this just adds to the server load.

Have you tried ISAPI rewrite from [link] ? You can try their product on a trial basis. There are other commercial 'rewrite' software with varying degrees of success.

But it is still hard to beat Apache. wink

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SportsGuy

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Joined: Aug 30, 2002

# Posts: 3550

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Posted: 02/21/2006 08:44 am

Thnaks prowler - I may very well give them a try.

Just heard back from Qwersoft - seems we'd need to redirect all links from anywhere else to the "new"/static URL using their gear. Not sure if that's a wall I'll hit with all apps or not.

We're testing these thngs on our staging sites now to assess the load times and server loads to make sure there's minimal impact to the user experience, so if we see problems, we'll work with what we can, or scrap the entire thing. Not interested in negatively affecting the users of the sites for a pretty looking URL.

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