The dynamic url/static url "should I mod_rewrite" subject marches on
without resolution. At Tips' suggestion I watched Matt Cutts' various
videos. And something occurred to me.
Most pages, whether dynamic or static (not counting top-level home
pages
and various forms) consist of various combinations of the following:
1) an optional display header
2) an optional display footer
3) global links (links every page has, like Home, Checkout, etc)
4) page specific links (a link set specific to this page)
5) one or more display areas, which could be wrapped inside p or div
tags or
table cells
The display areas are the most important parts. You could
argue they are the only important parts of the site. Links lead
to informative displays.
So it helps to think of a website as a domain of displays.
Each such display (text and matching images, sound bytes, etc)
could and should have a static instantiation, available to bots or
customers from
a static site map. Then there is no mod_rewrite/dynamic url issue to
worry about.
For each item in a shopping cart or for each informational
page in a site, there could and should be a single static page
that can be navigated to from a static site map.
Each such display area could *ALSO* be found by a keyword
query mechanism (show me all the shotguns for sale at Cabelas).
Dynamic pages generated as the result of queries like that
might exist as sets of thumbnails links in semi-infinitely variable
combinations.
But if each such link ulitimately lead to a display area that was
essentially
identical to its static counterpart, then you would have a system that
offered all
the benefits of dynamically generated pages with all the SEO benefits
of static pages, because, for each possible leaf-level display area,
you have it both ways.
That way you get to have your cake and eat it too.
All you need is a CMS that (once loaded with data) can
write out the site map and all the static pages, and also
be available process interactive search queries--to spit out variable
lists of links and thumbnails, as query results, that ultimately lead
to the
same displays found on the static pages.
If you had a CMS that did that, you'd have something.
If you followed that development model, there would be no
link dynamic link problem to worry about, and you wouldn't have
to fiddle with mod_rewrite and its pepto bysmol regular expressions.
