Hundreds of "real" pages or just one php page?

[CkJj]

What is the best method if you wish to make a huge content database on your site? Surely using one php page that gets all info from a database is a much faster method, and you only need to edit one page instead of hundreds of html pages if you for example wish to change the layout some day.

Rumors has it however that not all search engies will count all of these different "database pages" on a php page, and your search results would then be much worse than if you would have chosen the other, longer method. I think this sounds very logical and I would think it's much better to have 100 solid, real pages on a server filled with content, rather than having just one page......?

Wouldn't the best solution be maybe to use this method and use some php script or something on all pages so that you can change the layout and so on in one click?

Also, I have read that it's possible to program a script to actually create html pages for you...How does one learn this and is it hard? Is it even practical to use these days?

I would really, really want some more opinions on these questions. Thanks in advance!

[Thanol]

You can do a mod-rewrite which will make "fake" html pages from that one php file.

see: http://www.modrewrite.com/ for more info.


Example code that goes in your htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymlinks
 RewriteEngine On 
 RewriteRule ^neopets/([A-Za-z0-9-]+).shtml?$ neopets/files.php?id=$1.shtml [L]

www.cnwcentral.com/neopets/ all the pages appear to be shtml files but they aren't. The files don't actually exist on the server.

Rather they "exist" as part of files.php, which calls up all the information from the database.

Example:

http://www.cnwcentral.com/neopets/files.php?id=index.shtml

[LazyJim]

If you want to change the layout some day, code tha layout in CSS, save it to a file (or a few), reference it in the web pages and they alll get that style/layout. Update the CSS and every page reads the updated style/layout!!!

[aboyd]

I have a database of magazine dossiers. I created one PHP page to display whatever magazine you select. I don't know if links are allowed, but I'm sure JohnScott will remove this if it's out of place. So see here:

http://www.publisherdatabase.com/market_view.php?id=32

Same page, different ID:

http://www.publisherdatabase.com/market_view.php?id=339

Google actually indexes about 400 of the 1100 magazine dossiers. It might be more now, because I took some steps to make the other 700 visible to Google's spider. So it seems that using a single PHP page is viable. And if you use URL rewriting, it's even better.

I can't imagine making 1100 pages individually. What a chore that would be.

-Tony

[WorldwideTrading]

Originally Posted by aboyd

I have a database of magazine dossiers. I created one PHP page to display whatever magazine you select. I don't know if links are allowed, but I'm sure JohnScott will remove this if it's out of place. So see here:

http://www.publisherdatabase.com/market_view.php?id=32

Same page, different ID:

http://www.publisherdatabase.com/market_view.php?id=339

Google actually indexes about 400 of the 1100 magazine dossiers. It might be more now, because I took some steps to make the other 700 visible to Google's spider. So it seems that using a single PHP page is viable. And if you use URL rewriting, it's even better.

I can't imagine making 1100 pages individually. What a chore that would be.

-Tony

You could definatly benefit from learing how to use mod rewrite and linking to the pages via the titles. No to mention the page titles.