< CFcoffee />

Some more ramblings don't pick on me..... much, its late and I have a bit of time on my hands and its cheaper than a therapist.

Method 1: mod-rewrite/path_info

Commonly called the friendly URL technique. Using friendly URLs all the URLs are replaced by more simple, static looking URLs.

For example a dynamic query may look like this www.domain.com/?proId=1, but with friendly URLs the same is achieved like this www.domain.com/proID/1.html. Using friendly URLs are dependent on the server and language processing the page. For example Apache has a global variable which is called $PATH_INFO and is created on every HTTP request. So to query a database using proID/1.html you can use Apache, with PHP or ColdFusion explode functions. There are also a number of custom tags in ColdFusion available which do the same but on a Windows server.

One drawback this method used to be that Google saw them as being malformed, however this is no longer the case.

Method 2: .htaccess file

This method is dependent on what server your website is running on. An Apache server using PHP/ColdFusion?

The .htaccess file is used to make configuration changes. This means it could be used to change the way incoming URLs are processed.

To take advantage of the .htaccess file to create friendly URLs you can use its ability to error handle.

In the simplest terms you use the .htaccess file to track 404 errors one that the following string would cause www.domain.com/prodi/1.html it's at this point you have a processing page in your chosen web language to work out what it should read.

Method 3: Generation of Physical Pages

This method of creating friendly URLs is the less recognised of the previous methods but works the best. Exploiting the CFHTTP or CFFILE in Coldfusion to create static pages is simple.

Whats Wrong With Normal URL Strings?

First let's get a common SEO myth out of the way, so called Search Engine Friendly URLS don't improve your changes in the search engines.

I have been careful in this post not write the word "Search Engine Friendly URL's" The fact is, Google reads dynamic URLs just fine. Just follow some rules and you will get the same results...

• 1) Dont use sessions or logins on any page you want Google to index.
• 2) Keep the URL strings short, too long or if it look link a long session ID and Google may not follow it.
• 3) Dont uses names in the URL string Google does not like, such as ?id= etc. Use names that have good relevance to the page you are linking to, for example ?shoes=nike001
• 4) If you don't have to use a string in the URL dont! For example a sitemap page had a link on the main page like this sitemap.cfm?run=ture. Was this necessary?
• 5) Submit an XML Sitemap!