ASP.net +

[Hekkenberg Profile]

I have got a bit of a strange issue with a couple of our websites.

We use helicon isapi rewrite on IIS 6.0 on c# asp.net webpages, the actual rewriting of web addresses works fine. but... When I look in the source of the page at the form tag it shows as following and adds the querystring parameter to the SEO url:

Page source:

Code: Select all

<form method="post" action="port-overview-wicklow-ireland-pid209.html?pid=209" id="form1">

In our Helicon ISAPI_Rewrite configuration file (.htaccess) Version 3.1.0.64 i use the following rewrite rule

Code: Select all

RewriteRule port-overview-[\w-]*[^?]*-pid([\d]+)\.html* port-details.aspx?pid=$1 [QSA]

What could be causing this and how to prevent it or solve this, thanks for your help and advice guys

[Yaroslav]

Hello.

ISAPI_Rewrite rewrites only incoming URL. In fact, this is how URL rewriting works by design. Changing links on pages to correspond to your new URL scheme is a whole different story. There are two major approaches to doing this:

1. Actually change your application code to generate new links. This is the most universal and preferable way, unfortunately changing application is not always an option.

2. Using Helicon Ape mod_seo functions to replace links on pages on the fly, before they get delivered to the client. This may require some web development skills as well. Please take a look at the example article here: https://www.helicontech.com/articles/mod_seo/ If you decide to try Helicon Ape, then you will not need your ISAPI_Rewrite installation as Ape already covers URL rewriting functions using same syntax with ISAPI_Rewrite.

[Hekkenberg Profile]

Hi Yaroslav,

Thank you for your quick reply.

What confuses me is that this previously worked fine, however something must have changed for this problem to occur.
My guess would be it's server related rather then script related as we have 2 sites running on the same server and both seem to have this problem issue, however one of the two sites, didn't had any code changes, yet still showing the same problem

1) Could this be a server related issue ?

2) Could you please clarify or explain a bit more regarding the your first point ("Actually change your application code to generate new links. This is the most universal and preferable way, unfortunately changing application is not always an option.") ?

thank you again
thank you

[Yaroslav]

If you say it worked before, this is definitely not ISAPI_Rewrite related issue. ISAPI_Rewrite cannot change links on pages, in fact, it does not process server response at all, so this is physically impossible.

Many popular web applications come with already build functions for Search Engine Friendly URLs, chances are you were using one of these. This could be a switch inside the application settings or a separate module that you need to install and enable. Anyway, changing links on pages is most likely to be a part of the web application itself.

[Hekkenberg Profile]

Hi Yaroslav,

Thanks again for your reply and thanks for confirming that, we have build a standard ASP.net Framework 4.0 web form application, without any other SEO features build-in, other then using ISAPI_Rewrite to rewrite the url's and adding some metatags.

This is what makes me think that there might have been a change at our provider's end, unless the .net framework is adding this complexity by default itself, but I'm quite sure, if that would be the case I would have seen others post about this issue, but cant seem to find anything else regarding it.

I have asked the hosting provider about this and their reply was:

Unfortunately, this is not something we can assist with as it requires a special module which we cannot set up for you on your current package. It also requires some developer work to hide the original URL request before it is rewritten, and unfortunately we do not offer this service. I would suggest contacting a developer who can take a look and advise what needs to be done regarding this.

I can understand that the installation of 'Helicon Ape' on their shared platform is not allowed, but their comment regarding hiding the original URL request before it's being rewritten makes no sense in my head.

[Yaroslav]

The Ape may still be installed on their host unless they are intentionally restricting execution of custom modules on the application. Please check out these instructions: http://www.helicontech.com/articles/how ... d-hosting/
However, using Ape isn't probably an option for you as it will require web development efforts anyway. This is what their comment on 'hiding URLs' was probably about - you need to find a web developer that will modify your application to send new SEO URLs to the clients.
BTW, if your only concern about URLs in forms (as you mentioned in your first post) you can simply ignore the problem. Search engines will not navigate forms anyway, so the only advantage of modifying URLs in forms is an aesthetic improvement for the user to see slightly more beautiful URLs and no improvement over SE ranking.