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404 Traps

Expanding the theory...

         

NetGrease

4:34 pm on Jul 31, 2001 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'm trying to expand my knowledge of the 404 trap theory, which is briefly discussed in this thread [webmasterworld.com]. I'm currently working with a site that holds an awful lot of text-based information, and would like to present this, via SQL, to browser based on the request string, e.g.

[mysite.com...]

Ideally, I'd like to be able to break apart the above string into it's composite keywords, look those up in the SQL database via whatever process is most-appropriate (ASP?) and then create a page "on the fly" that would contain the text found in the SQL database associated with those keywords.

I know it's possible, but my knowledge is limited, and I'd like to implement this as quickly (ha ha) as possible. So;

1) Which language is best for the interpretation of the query?

2) What kind of equipment/server software will I need to do this?

Hope this doesn't read like a lame request for hand-outs - I genuinely want to put time and effort into this, and would like to know which languages are worth my while learning to get this right.

Many thanks in advance to any who and all who respond.

sugarkane

6:06 pm on Jul 31, 2001 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Hi NetGrease, welcome to WebmasterWorld.

This is a nice idea that should certainly help convert 404s into useful traffic. There are many ways of going about it, personally I'd use either PHP or Perl for this, along with MySQL.

Why PHP or Perl? Both have very powerful regex functions for parsing text (eg extracting the keywords from the referrer), and both offer good database support for a variety of databases.

Why MySQL? Only because I'm used to it ;)

PHP can handle MS SQL through ODBC (see here [php.net] for details), although I've never done it...

I'm sure ASP could be used effectively, but I'm far from knowledgeable on ASP so I can't offer any pointers.

Your choice of language boils down to both your personal preference and what options you have available - are you running on a unix or NT server? What database system do you use? etc

Hope this was of some help...

NetGrease

8:10 am on Aug 1, 2001 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



That's a great help, thanks sugarkane. I've been looking for a good excuse to learn PHP and MySQL, so I'm glad to hear you recommend the two.

We're currently assessing what we need for a big overhaul (which is fantatic), so this will play a part in the redesign.

Thanks again!