SEO Friendly Links and .htaccess Hacks

Alex — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:17:36 +0000

I’m going to assume most people know how to activate or edit their own .htaccess files. If you’re not sure how to edit them then visit this link.

htaccess modifications can come in really handy when cleaning up some of the old management systems. For those that use Google Webmaster Tools, this can be a great way to clean up those nasty 404s. Also note the Bing Webmaster Area. Many developers don’t build for SEO purposes and let other guys deal with it later. Sometimes they will even request a fee. Here’s a few tricks to save a couple bucks or clean up some links.

1. Removing variables from your links

Ever wonder how sites that have nice friendly links to customer profiles do it? There are a number of methods but if you use php variables that come out like this:

http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php?profile=customer_name

Apply this short mod to your .htaccess file:

 HTML |   copy code | ?  
1 
2 RewriteRule ^profile\/(.*)$ index.php?profile=1 [L,QSA]
3

The result:

http://mywebsite.com/profile/customer_name

Nice friendly links that everyone understands. Even the users.

2. SEO Friendly 301 Redirects

This is probably the simplest and most useful htaccess. As developers, we change our minds all the time. If those changes ever include changing post names, moving folders, or just altering a link. Google Webmaster Tools is going to come knocking with a 404 error within the next couple days. Fix it with this:

 HTML |   copy code | ?  
1 
2 Redirect 301 /path/to/old/location /new/location
3

/new/location can also be a link like http://new_website.com

3. Custom Error Pages

These just help you make a nice polished site. Particularly the 404 error page.

 HTML |   copy code | ?  
1 
2 ErrorDocument 401 /error/401.php
3 ErrorDocument 403 /error/403.php
4 ErrorDocument 404 /error/404.php
5 ErrorDocument 500 /error/500.php

4. Block IPs Using htaccess

Handy when you just don't like someone, or a country, or you just hate that IP block

 HTML |   copy code | ?  
1 
2 allow from all
3 deny from 145.186.14.122
4 deny from 124.15

5. Prevent Hotlinking

I get a lot requests for this one.

 HTML |   copy code | ?  
1 
2 Options +FollowSymlinks
3 # Protect Hotlinking
4 RewriteEngine On
5 RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
6 RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?domainname.com/ [nc]
7 RewriteRule .*.(gif|jpg|png)$ http://domainname.com/img/hotlink_f_o.png [nc]
8

For more dry information on .htaccess. Here's a great blog on it:

http://htaccess.wordpress.com/tag/htaccess-mod-rewrite/

String Handling: Parsing Links from a String

Alex — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:33:17 +0000

With the popularity of APIs that connect to Twitter, Facebook, and even sites like StumbleUpon, it’s becoming increasing important to work with String Handling functions.

Here’s a very handy function to replace a link in a String with the html format for posting on the web.

I can’t remember where I got this from but someone deserves credit for helping write this:

 PHP |   copy code | ?  
01  
02 function clickable_link($text)
03 {
04  $text = preg_replace('#(script|about|applet|activex|chrome):#is', ":", $text);
05  
06  // pad it with a space so we can match things at the start of the 1st line.
07  $ret = ' ' . $text;
08  
09  // matches an "xxxx://yyyy" URL at the start of a line, or after a space.
10  // xxxx can only be alpha characters.
11  // yyyy is anything up to the first space, newline, comma, double quote or <
12  $ret = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])([\w]+?://[\w\#$%&~/.\-;:=,?@\[\]+]*)#is", "", $ret);
13  
14  // matches a "www|ftp.xxxx.yyyy[/zzzz]" kinda lazy URL thing
15  // Must contain at least 2 dots. xxxx contains either alphanum, or "-"
16  // zzzz is optional.. will contain everything up to the first space, newline,
17  // comma, double quote or <.
18  $ret = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])((www|ftp)\.[\w\#$%&~/.\-;:=,?@\[\]+]*)#is", "", $ret);
19  
20  // matches an email@domain type address at the start of a line, or after a space.
21  // Note: Only the followed chars are valid; alphanums, "-", "_" and or ".".
22  $ret = preg_replace("#(^|[\n ])([a-z0-9&\-_.]+?)@([\w\-]+\.([\w\-\.]+\.)*[\w]+)#i", "@", $ret);
23  
24  // Remove our padding..
25  $ret = substr($ret, 1);
26  return $ret;
27 }
28

1
2	ErrorDocument 401 /error/401.php
3	ErrorDocument 403 /error/403.php
4	ErrorDocument 404 /error/404.php
5	ErrorDocument 500 /error/500.php

1
2	Options +FollowSymlinks
3	# Protect Hotlinking
4	RewriteEngine On
5	RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
6	RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?domainname.com/ [nc]
7	RewriteRule .*.(gif\|jpg\|png)$ http://domainname.com/img/hotlink_f_o.png [nc]
8

01
02	function clickable_link($text)
03	{
04	$text = preg_replace('#(script\|about\|applet\|activex\|chrome):#is', ":", $text);
05
06	// pad it with a space so we can match things at the start of the 1st line.
07	$ret = ' ' . $text;
08
09	// matches an "xxxx://yyyy" URL at the start of a line, or after a space.
10	// xxxx can only be alpha characters.
11	// yyyy is anything up to the first space, newline, comma, double quote or <
12	$ret = preg_replace("#(^\|[\n ])([\w]+?://[\w\#$%&~/.\-;:=,?@\[\]+]*)#is", "", $ret);
13
14	// matches a "www\|ftp.xxxx.yyyy[/zzzz]" kinda lazy URL thing
15	// Must contain at least 2 dots. xxxx contains either alphanum, or "-"
16	// zzzz is optional.. will contain everything up to the first space, newline,
17	// comma, double quote or <.
18	$ret = preg_replace("#(^\|[\n ])((www\|ftp)\.[\w\#$%&~/.\-;:=,?@\[\]+]*)#is", "", $ret);
19
20	// matches an email@domain type address at the start of a line, or after a space.
21	// Note: Only the followed chars are valid; alphanums, "-", "_" and or ".".
22	$ret = preg_replace("#(^\|[\n ])([a-z0-9&\-_.]+?)@([\w\-]+\.([\w\-\.]+\.)*[\w]+)#i", "@", $ret);
23
24	// Remove our padding..
25	$ret = substr($ret, 1);
26	return $ret;
27	}
28

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SEO Friendly Links and .htaccess Hacks

String Handling: Parsing Links from a String