Using dynamic content but masking .asp

How?

[themoff]

My site is basically built around a few asp pages that query a database to generate the content. There are about 600 pages of available content, served up through about four ASP pages. Previously, there were 600 seperate HTML pages, which was great for SE ranking, but a nightmare to maintain. I converted the entire site to ASP, which has made it a lot, lot, better for both me and the user, but now the SEs don't index it all properly.

Over on Search Engine Promotion - What are they using? [webmasterworld.com], someone asked about how a certain site was manging to use dynamic content but not show any .asp file extensions. Brett replied:

SSI. Not hard to do if you have control of the server config.

Is there an explanation somewhere of how to do this, and what kind of control you need over the server config? It sounds perfect for what I need to do on my site.

Thanks, Robin

[Brett_Tabke]

On Apache, I could wipe out a good explantion for you in no time - but doing it under a windows box is a different critter and I don't think I could give an accurate example.

[grnidone]

I think you have us stumped, Themoff. We try to get to posts as quickly as we can.

Please understand, we're not ignoring you.

What's really funny is that I thought "Oh I can point him to some great links I got in my sticky mail this morning from that new user..."

and then realized you were the one who sent me the links! *LOL!*

-G

[charlie]

make it with 404 redirection...

ex :

[yoursite.com...]

becomes

[yoursite.com...]

but this directory does not exist... then it will be a 404 error...

just configure your website with :
404.asp as defaut 404 error page

in 404.asp

<%
if instr(request.querystring,"idx")>0 then

'catch id
var1=split(request.querystring,"idx")
var2=split(var1(1),"/")
id=var2(0)

'now you can use your id to build your page

else

'your defaut 404 error

end if
%>

quite basic but very efficient... a good beginning to build a doorway... ;)

[evinrude]

If you have access to the configuration of the IIS server (assuming IIS) you could map the .html extension to the asp parser, which I s'pose might give a bit of a boost SEO-wise. On a large, hit-intensive site this may result in a performance drop, though. I also don't know what (if any) security risk this might create. But you'd be able to use the .html extension instead of .asp.

[themoff]

Thanks for people's help with this. I am still trying to work out what to do. I don't have any kind of access to the configuration of the server.
However, I am moving to new hosts soon, where I should have some kind of control over the 404 error, so may be able to try out charlie's suggestion.
Cheers, Robin