Forum Moderators: phranque
Thanks
Sites that are currently covering this? None that I know of...
I'm working on some research on just these issues.
never did i see the phtm file returned on a search...
now we have moved to a dedicated server...
we can set it up to parse php script pages with a html extension...
so far this has worked...
if you are on a public server, chances your isp will not accomidate...
:o
WhoaWhoa[big]Whoa!!![/big]
How exactly would it matter? PHP is compiled at runtime by the server, there is no trace of the code when it's served.
The only way it would matter is if your using a .php extention. That could make an engine discriminate based on the fact that it has an other than htm/html extention.
I just don't get it?
The really bizarre thing is that one page HAS been indexed but it too has the .php extension!! It's just a page with the code in it that returns all the PHP info from the server.
I am totally stuck now. Is any more known on this?
My guess (and that's really all it is), is that the search engines simply don't like the extensions. Since PHP and ASP (among others....) can be made to display anything based on whatever the designer chooses (ie browser type, OS, user name, etc...) the search engines spiders may be given something completely different from what a "real" user sees. If I was the designer of a search engine, I might be skeptical, myself. :)
Some people set things up so they can use .html or other extensions to be parsed by the server. I personally wouldn't suggest that simply 'cause if you have a busy site, why force everything to be parsed when only a handful needs to be. That puts an unneccisary (...dear god, that's gotta be spelled wrong...) strain on the system (IMO.)
I am using php almost a year and am slowly converting my site from htm to php. Php makes it far easier for me to manage my site.
a) When I search for my site per site name and then click on 'More pages from this site' it seems only to list htm pages and the index pages.
These index pages have actually the php extension but their url ends in the trailing slash. Altavista seems in this case to take what it gets and ignores the extension (or rather doesn't see it).
b) When I use host:mydomain.com I also get apparently only index, htm and even some cgi-generated pages (../cgi-bin/links/rate.cgi?ID=41). No php! Same goes for url:mydomain.com.
c) When I use url:mydomain.com/subdirectory - well, if the subdirectory contains only php pages I get them inclusive the index page. If the subdirectory contains both php and htm pages I get only my htm pages, not the php, though Altavista *has* indexed them. I checked.
Seems to me that Alta indexes php, but severely penalizes them. :( I doesn't like it. I can't go back to html, parsing the html extension isn't a good solution either.
I think I have to focus on the index pages to rank high.
Some people set things up so they can use .html or other extensions to be parsed by the server. I personally wouldn't suggest that simply 'cause if you have a busy site, why force everything to be parsed when only a handful needs to be. That puts an unneccisary (...dear god, that's gotta be spelled wrong...) strain on the system (IMO.)
I would recommend doing something like using .htm for plain text pages and .html for parsed stuff. or put all your parsed .html files in one directory, and your plain text files in another directory using different server settings for each. You can also use the .htaccess command XBitHack which selectively parses files based on whether or not they have the execute bit set(or something like this).
