[Techtalk] webalizer stats and ?query strings

Mary mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org
Sat Feb 8 09:30:52 EST 2003


On Thu, Feb 06, 2003, Raquel Rice wrote:
> Aside from the Webalizer problems you're encountering, there are other
> "problems" with creating dynamic web sites using "?" and "&".  Most of
> the big search engines will not index sites with an "?" in the URL.
> mod_rewrite really is your friend here ... and it fixes the Webalizer
> problems.

There's a fairly good argument put forward at:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990321.html

[URL as UI]

Neilson writes:

    The URL will continue to be part of the Web user interface for
    several more years, so a usable site requires:

      - a domain name that is easy to remember and easy to spell
      - short URLs
      - easy-to-type URLs
      - URLs that visualize the site structure
      - URLs that are "hackable" to allow users to move to higher levels
        of the information architecture by hacking off the end of the
        URL
      - persistent URLs that don't change 

However, my provider doesn't have mod_rewrite, and while there are
alternatives even to that, I still have a site with GET URLs. I use the
analog software from http://www.analog.cx/ which does seem to process
GET queries.

-Mary



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