I know this subject must have come up before, but please forgive me because I just don't have time to dig through the search results to find an answer.
I am at an empass. I have a friend who believes in using a flat file system for optimum search engine performance. And, I tend to agree.
However, I have recently gained some valuable knowledge on the "behind-the-scenes" techniques used by a certain retail website that's in a very specialized niche market.
Because I do not have the money to start a proper e-commerce site, I have decided to go the affiliate route. I take the data provided by the site with which I am affiliated and use it to build my own site, with all links leading to the partner site for ordering.
The problem is, I have chosen a couple of products that have a more general appeal but are, according to my research, good bets. However, there are hundreds of products and to make them all into a flat file site is going to take forever, not to mention rather tedious.
FYI, I code primarily in PHP:
I have coded a CMS designed specifically for my primary product using MySQL. This way I can simply copy and paste the information into a form, which is a lot easier than trying to handle hundreds of individual files. And updating product information is a whole lot easier this way.
I'm torn, though. With the flat file system, there are at least 4 levels of pages: The homepage which connects to the category pages, which connect to the sub-category pages which lead to all the product pages in the sub-categories. All of them saturated with relevant filenames, page titles, metas and content.
With the database, I get URLs that look like this:
http*//www.mysite.com/widget/widget-info.php?page=Widget%20Widget%20Widget
The "%20" doesn't bother me so much, but the "?" does.
I'd like to get some opinions on both sides of this issue so that I can be informed properly before I proceed with populating the site.
Another question: Can using a config file system to define variables in the template be used for the same purpose where the config file defines the variable $widget_name which is called to the include template by <? echo $widget_name; ?> ? If so, how would I structure this?
BTW, if anyone knows of an easier way that still maintains the site's ability to welcome spiders and bots, please don't hesitate!
Renegade posted this at 07:11 — 16th January 2006.
He has: 2,944 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
I guess the answer your question, you have to ask yourself - is it a big site? or a small site? - if it's a big site, then, you will want to go with MySQL because, having a big flat file will break the file and therefore the site.
Flat files just aren't reliable enough for a large site.
Cheng Eu Chew - Renegade
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chrishirst posted this at 08:24 — 16th January 2006.
He has: 379 posts
Joined: Apr 2005
There isn't one. Flat Files, static html, ASP, PHP, CFM are all the same to a SE indexer. It's all HTML by the time it gets there.
Just don't put blocks in the way.
No Session IDs in the URI.
Do not require cookies.
keep querystring parameters below 3
One thing to note is avoid spaces in any part of the URI. It can cause problems for some user agents.
Use some code to put a "-" in place of the space for the links and replace it once the querystring has been retrieved, it's safer, looks better and is much easier to type in or read out.
Chris
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