[geeklog-devtalk] topic.php and url conformity

[Tony Bibbs]

Richard S. Westmoreland wrote:


> In case you haven't seen my posts in the Cool Hacks forum about using 

> static urls for the geeklog topics...

>  

> I made a copy of index.php and borrowed code from various files, and 

> created a topic.php.  If you look at my site you'll observe that when 

> clicking on a topic link, instead of getting 

> /index.php?topic=anti-spam, you'll get /topic.php/anti-spam.  Not only 

> does this optimize my search engine results for that keyword, but I 

> think it organizes the sections a little better as it now is treated 

> like a directory.  With additional tweaks I'm also using the section 

> name as my title tag.  I've updated all the code to generate the 

> proper links to use it.


Right, very similar to the url rewriting we do in static pages already.


>  

> If Geeklog uses this as a permanent change, it can be useful for other 

> things.  Not only do you get consistency using static links, but you 

> can (and I'm going to) strip out the unused code in index.php that was 

> used to read the topic variable and parse the stories based on that.  

> This should reduce the file size and speed up rendering the front 

> page.  Also as an additional benefit, I'm going to customize the 

> topic.php to use different layout templates so my sections appear 

> different than the front page.

>  


This style of rewriting did have some bugs on windows.  I can't remember 
the details but it was either the PHP as a CGI under apache 1.3.x on 
windows or it was PHP as a CGI under IIS.  The bug, if memory serves me 
correct, was a segmentation fault or something on that level.  We could 
sure use verification on this.  In fact, to be thorough, we need to test 
this under windows with PHP as an ISAPI, too.

This is exactly the reason why the config setting for enabling 
url_rewriting exists...to avoid support issues.  Until thorough testing 
is done, don't count on anyone modifying the 1.3.x codebase until that 
happens.


> Apologies for reposting what I already posted in the forums but I 

> figure this mailing list is better suited for my "ideas" and I can 

> communicate directly to the developers.  I'll post to the list this 

> type of stuff from now on.


No problem.  Thanks for the input.

--Tony