URL Uniformity: How much must they conform?

[monty]

I'm setting up my site to use friendlier URLs like this:

site.com/article/name_of_topic

article will actually be a PHP file. However, in addition to template pages like article, I have a lot of non-template PHP pages on my site, such as terms.php, about.php, privacy.php, etc.

If I am to maintain URL unformity on my site, then the URL to reach the terms.php page on my site should be site.com/terms instead of site.com/terms.php. Right? But this would require that I add the following to my .htaccess file for every single PHP file on my site so that I don't have to include the ".php" after the page name:

<Files terms>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

This seems a bit overkill, especially for pages that are mostly static and that don't really need to be indexed by a search engine. I could end up having a long list of <Files> elements in my .htaccess file if I have to do this for every page on my site.

Is it more important to maintain URL uniformity on a site, or is it acceptable to use a mix of both: site.com/article/name_of_topic for articles, and site.com/terms.php for Terms (or any other mostly-static page)? Is there an "industry standard" for something like this?

[lo0ol]

I haven't seen a sort of standard or anything. I actually do the combination method myself- I use friendly folder URLs plus regular page.php pages. Honestly, I don't think that matters too much to have your URLs exactly alike. Like you were talking about- they're kinda two different things: static and dynamic pages. I don't think static pages warrant a whole lot of modifications to your .htaccess. So no, I think you'll be fine the way you have it.

[mmj]

Have a look at the 'Cool URIs' link in my signature, under How can I remove the file extensions.... You can set up Apache to do content-negotiation for you so that if somebody asks for http://www.example.com/terms, Apache will automatically search for the best match (and would find terms.php).

SitePoint does exactly this. For example,

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs.php
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs

Script filename is blogs.php

[Rynoguill]

Originally Posted by mmj

Have a look at the 'Cool URIs' link in my signature, under How can I remove the file extensions...

i know this is the apache forum, but does anyone know if this is possible with IIS?

[Owen]

Why not?

<FilesMatch "^(gif|png)">
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

(I think. My regexp is a little rusty. It should match everything except gif and png extensions.)

Or the directory directive? http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/core.html#directory

What I did on one site is name everything .go. Then set apache up to parse .go files like .php.

But as said earlier, there's nothing wrong w/ .php files in Google's eye.

Owen

[pippo]

Tom,
> you can set up Apache to do content-negotiation
> for you so that if somebody asks
Did you use the MultiViews option ?
Under .htaccess ?

[mmj]

Yes, multiviews is the most convenient way to do this, because it does it automatically. Otherwise you must have "vary" files.

[Rynoguill]

Originally Posted by Rynoguill

i know this is the apache forum, but does anyone know if this is possible with IIS?

does no one know about doing this with iis? or should i reask in another forum?