[ic] MOD_REWRITE and query strings

interchange-users@icdevgroup.org interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
Sat Sep 7 14:37:02 2002


Quoting Jeff Dafoe (jeff@badtz-maru.com):
> > Has anyone considered using MOD_REWRITE to just strip out everything after
> > and including the "?" in the URL?  My site only uses query strings for the
> > mv_session_id and mv_pc.  Would this be a bad idea for any reason?  I
> guess
> > this would disable page caching.  Do I need that feature on my frame-less
> > store?  If this is OK, it may be the perfect solutin for me....
> 
>     I thought about that the other day but then realized that it doesn't
> help the issue any.  The problem is apparently that some spiders (I don't
> know which ones because google will) will not traverse links with question
> marks in them.  By using mod_rewrite you can change what appears in the
> address bar but you cannot change the HTML that is being output, which is
> where the ? and subsequent session information appear.  So the first time
> the spider follows a link and is assigned a session ID, the next page to
> appear will have the session ID appended to all the appropriate links.
> mod_rewrite will not change this behavior.
>     The way to approach this would probably be modifications to
> interchange's session management and it sounds like Mike already has some
> sort of solution for interchange 4.9 .

Yes. And this discussion has been good because it has allowed me to look
at possibly defining a "MV_ROBOT_UA" variable or even a directive like
RobotUA *global* to automatically enable mv_tmp_session on access by a
spider matching that spec.

If someone really wants this for the stable tree and is willing to pay
for it, any of the consultants who are a part of the ICDEVGROUP core
team would undoubtedly be able to merge in the 4.9 changes into the
stable tree. The amount of time would probably be two hours or less.

-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.513.523.7621      <mike@perusion.com>

Being against torture ought to be sort of a bipartisan thing.
-- Karl Lehenbauer