Are iframes bad?

must be a dumb question

[Doood]

I have a small table (500x90) that I want to place on other peoples websites, for pay.

Some people act like iframes are the devil and don't want anything to do with an iframe.

Are iframes really bad or just have a bad rep because of the frames of old days?

[Doood]

Also wanted to ask, instead of using an iframe would it be pretty much the same thing and place the same load on my server if I use a php to include the page rather than an iframe.

Like, <?PHP include('http://www.url/to/file');?>

[tedster]

Content that is in an iframe is NOT indexed as part of the url by the search engines -- because the iframe content is at another url.

However, content added server-side through an include IS indexed as part of the url.

Server load differences? Probably minimal. Potential ranking differences? Could be big.

[Doood]

Ok.

But the include would require their page to be .php or .shtml for ssi.

The only way I've found to get my table on a .html page is by iframe. Surely there's some way to include it on a .html page.

[ccubed99]

Yes platform could be an issue... if the issue mentioned about getting the content indexed by a search engine is an issue then the iframe is not the route to go.

Maybe something simple such as java scripts document.write would resolve the issue?

[Matt Probert]

Are iframes really bad or just have a bad rep because of the frames of old days?

Frames aren't bad. They don't work on text browsers, so you need to provide an alternative. The issue some people have is that they are not spider friendly. But web sites are made for the readers, not for search engines! Unless you're creating one of those dreadful quick buck con sites we all visit by mistake when we mistype a URL!

Matt

[wmuser]

iFrames arent an evil but they are not so good as well,if there is a way try to use something else instead

[tedster]

Maybe something simple such as java scripts document.write would resolve the issue

From what I see, content written into the page with javascript document.write is also not indexed.

[ccubed99]

From what I see, content written into the page with javascript document.write is also not indexed.

This begs the question why would content generated by php be indexed and content by java script not indexed? Which leads us back to:

The idea is to port content to other pages. So the questions are:
Is getting the content indexed important?
How can this be done over multiple platforms?

If indexing is not important then it seems that an Iframe would be fine. Just be sure to use the <noframes> tag set for those that have frames turned to off.

If indexing is important then we are left with the multiple platforms question.

[tedster]

why would content generated by php be indexed and content by java script not indexed?

Because javascript is executed on the client side, and php is executed on the server. So the php included content is actually served as part of the document, and the technology being used is not even touched by the spider -- it just gets a completed page.

[henry0]

I wrote that a while ago

Why not having html parsing php
using " .htaccess "
try one line or the other
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .html
OR
AddType application/x-httpd-php .html

OR
set it up in httpd.conf
find that line:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
add .html to the end
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html
if you do not have root access ask your ISP to perform it on your behalf.

[daosmith]

The <object> element is perfect for what you have in mind. It allows for you to include a child HTML page inside a parent page without the use of an <iframe>, or SSI. I'm not sure why it is so rarely used: perhaps it is poorly supported in older browsers (works fine in IE6/Firefox).

As an example...

<object data="foo.html" width="500" height="900">Some text for browsers that do not support objects here</object>

I would imagine that this suffers from the same indexing problems as <iframe> elements, however.

[Doood]

I don't care about search engines indexing it because the page that's being iframed only has dynamic text links on it from an ad script that are being pulled from a database, so they can't be indexed anyway. It's just code on the page and no hardlinks.

I've tried and tested just about every way to get my page on other peoples sites and the iframe has worked the best. The only thing I haven't tried is javascript like google ads.

[Doood]

Since these text links are coming from an iframe on my domain, if someone clicks on a link will is show my domain as the referrer or the domain that the iframe was on?

I'm guessing it will show my domain because my links don't show up when you view the source of their page?