Posted: 26 February 2010 at 2:31pm | IP Logged

Our site now uses URLs like this:

http://www.masterbeat.com/#release/6589490123

http://www.masterbeat.com/#artist/madonna

http://www.masterbeat.com/#remixer/daveaude

http://www.masterbeat.com/#genre/house

You can see from above our site uses these URLs to load dynamic pages, with the first section after the # being the page 'type' and the next section after the second / being the content 'code'.  Together they create the dynamic page that loads.

We want to rewrite the URLs to present SEO friendly links by re-writing and basically dropping out the # and adding .htm to the end.

So the above URLs should get rewritten to:

www.masterbeat.com/#release/6589490123 -> www.masterbeat.com/release/6589490123.htm

http://www.masterbeat.com/#artist/madonna -> www.masterbeat.com/artist/madonna.htm

http://www.masterbeat.com/#remixer/daveaude -> www.masterbeat.com/remixer/daveaude.htm

http://www.masterbeat.com/#genre/house -> www.masterbeat.com/genre/house.htm

The second section above is the rewritten URL that will be presented to the user, google search engines etc.  The URL will be translated back to our site as the first section.

Posted: 26 February 2010 at 5:00pm | IP Logged

Hi Yaroslav,

Yes, we KNOW we have a Flash website.  That is NOT the issue.  We are building underlying DYNAMIC pages UNDER the flash page that will show the same content in HTML.  These pages will be called with the same link structure I show above - the flash window will show the flash version and our underlying html section (in a DIV) will show the corresponding info for SEO purposes for indexing.

Instead of worrying about the type of site we have, could we instead try to get our question answered about how to do what we are asking? 

If we want an outbound (coming from our site) page to be rewritten (or in your terminolgy - a 'freeze link') so that a page like this:

http://www.masterbeat.com/#release/658949123 gets 'frozen' and presented to the world (and google) as http://www.masterbeat.com/release/658949123.htm

CAN THIS BE DONE with linkfreeze and/or mod_linkfreeze within Helicon APE?  It appears Linkfreeze itself won't allow us to use the # sign as part of a frozen link (ie: removing it) - is this the case?  If it can, how?  And if it can't, can mod_linkfreeze in APE?

Thank you for all of your help.  We know what we want to do is possible as we've been directed to you to make it happen, and some combination of your products should be able to do what we need, which is simply remove the # and add an .htm for outbound links.

Thank you!

Posted: 27 February 2010 at 4:51pm | IP Logged

Hi, we understand you are trying to help, and we appreciate it.  Please bear with us one more time - as I think we are having a breakdown in communication on what we are trying to accomplish.  Please understand that after designing and implementing our site, we DO understand how it works.  We DO understand it is Flash and we DO understand that it is just ONE page and not a lot of pages.  We KNOW the site sits on one page and we KNOW how the # works as an anchor.  We understand all of this.

I guess what we are not portraying to you is that we ALREADY have the means within the page (in javascript and other special code) to PARSE the URL that appears to make the Flash window (and special underlying HTML sections in DIV) dynamically generate the code and data we need to be indexed.  To a search engine, we CAN make it think this is a lot of dynamic (new) pages to index rather than the one page it really is.

What we are trying to ask is WHY can�t either linkfreeze or mod_linkfreeze (probably the better solution) replace or remove the # for us to the outside world (outgoing) and put it back (incoming) for URL calls.  This is what you advertise linkfreeze to do.  Let�s step back and remove the # from the equation for a second because that is what you are getting hung up on and determined it won�t work without actually seeing that we already understand what needs to happen on our end with the Flash page and pages being generated.  Let us worry about that.  What we�d love for you to worry about is WHY the # can�t be replaced or �frozen� by linkfreeze like other characters if we know what to do on our end.

In your blog post at:  http://helicontech.blogspot.com/search/label/seo  you claim that �you turn dynamic pages into static ones� by freezing a  link.  You intercept the URL going out and apply rules to URL to remove/replace characters, and you do the SAME THING when the call comes back in, based on those rules.

So if you don�t worry about the fact that our site is flash for a moment and to your thinking that it�s all one page (we know how to deal with this) - can you please explain why there can�t be a rule that would replace this:

http://www.masterbeat.com/#release/658949123

with

http://www.masterbeat.com/release/658949123.htm  -> this new URL that you �froze� or �rewrote� would be presented to the search engines.  Trust us that we know how to make the page appear with the data on it (OUTSIDE THE FLASH) that this will appear as a unique indexable page.

Now, in the same vein, or only in reverse, WHY can�t the above rule work in reverse, as you advertise linkfreze to do, so that when it gets a call from the outside world to http://www.materbeat.com/release/658949123.htm  it knows this is a frozen link and rewrites it back to http://www.masterbeat.com/#release/658949123 so that our site, flash window, and other code see the URL the way they need to. 

It should work the same even if this is a # instead of a ? or & - remember, even on those types of characters, the pages DO NOT EXIST - linkfreeze or mod_linkfreeze is creating an appearance of a static page, but when you present the URL back to the site architecture, you�ve put it back the way it is supposed to be (this is a bad example - but you say you CAN change www.masterbeat.com/?release/6589949 to www.masterbeat.com/release/658949.htm and change it back.  So why can�t you do this with a #, as long as it gets rewritten to include the # again when our site sees it, we are happy, and Linkfreeze shouldn�t care.

We DO realize this is out of the ordinary, and maybe you didn�t anticipate a site being able to create dynamic pages from things after the # - but we can.  That�s all dynamic pages are anyway - pages that don�t exist and that are created on the fly.  We just happen to need to do it with a # character because of our Flash component.

If you were to pretend Flash didn�t exist on our site, and it was a series of aspx pages, still using the # as a separator/anchor, could we do this:

Freeze or rewrite so a site link like https://www.masterbeat.com/#artist/madonna/home.aspx  so it appears to outside world (google, etc) as https://www.masterbeat.com/artist/madonna/home.aspx but gets froze and comes back to our site with the # back in place?  Pretend this is a dynamic ASPX page and NOT Flash.  Why can�t a rule be written to freeze /#artist and replace with /artist?  But put the # back when it comes back to our site.  Again, this is what linkfreeze does with ? and & - we just want to do it with a #.  Let us worry about what happens AFTER the page is rendered, we just need the rewrite/freeze help from you.  This should be possible if you can do it with the other characters.

Posted: 02 March 2010 at 12:38pm | IP Logged

I'd like to try LinkFreeze, since it seems to be more in line with what we need to do - however, I can't see how to replace the '#' character.  When I look at the LinkFreeze rule definition, I only have the option of replacing ?, &, and =.  How do I replace a '#' using LinkFreeze?

Posted: 03 March 2010 at 1:22pm | IP Logged

Hi, Slava -

We're really just concerned with the URL itself, not the page contents, and the page is aspx, not html - is that a problem?

Posted: 03 March 2010 at 4:03pm | IP Logged

http://www.masterbeat.com/#release/658949123

with