Htaccess Tag | Jacob Emerick's Blog

Resetting to Subdomains

This post assumes some intermediate understanding of using .htaccess files, mod rewrite, and website structure.

After several months of launching my main website, I took a good hard look at my traffic and Google ranking. I soon noticed some major problems with the way the site was structured and how Google was treating my content that would only increase with time. In order to strengthen my rank, and better divide my website's content into manageable entities, I decided to utilize subdomains.

Previously, my website was divided up by simple folders, and the URLs reflected this. My waterfall site was under jacobemerick.com/waterfalls, and my blog under jacobemerick.com/blog. However, search engines still see all of this under one domain, and this started to create a very large and diverse range of content types under jacobemerick.com. My page rank was suffering simply because I had everything from web development blog posts to waterfall photo and information under a single domain. Also, as I would like to continue to diversify the services offered by my site beyond the current four sub-sites (blog, portfolio, map, and waterfalls), this problem would increase over time.

A subdomain is simply an extra word in the domain name that separates it from the main domain....

• Tags:
• my site
• htaccess
• mod rewrite

Using Mod Rewrite to Mask Variables

This post assumes that you are familiar with server side scripting, if/then statements, and basic website development.

When I first started working with web development, I always assumed that there was a one-to-one relation to a unique URL and file on the server. That is, every time a user clicks on a new link, they are taken to a different file and/or script on the server. This brings several problems to a web developer's plate, most importantly maintaining a consistent look across a wide range of pages, usually addressed by using a content management system or template product. If I want to update part of a website as a web developer, I probably want to update a single file as opposed to a multitude of pages to keep the main parts of a website (header, footer, navigation) the same.

It took a while to understand how to use $_GET variables to simplify a website. First used for html forms, $_GET variables are passed through the address bar from one page to the next. The best example of this is with Google. When you visit http://www.google.com/ to search for 'Oak Table', you view the search results after pressing Submit. The address bar now has a bunch of gunk at the end of it ...

• Tags:
• htaccess
• mod rewrite