URL rewriting - how do YOU do it?

I am writing an article for aspalliance about making asp.net sites search engine friendly. This obviously brings me to the subject of URLs.

Regardless of if you believe there is any benefit to a search engine ranking doing this I think it is a lot kinder on your users to have static looking URLs. Which would you rather see?

http://www.somesite.com/?pageId=7627&catId=2367&site=Foo&caption=Elephant+Butt

or

http://www.somesite.com/photography/wildlife/elephant.aspx

?

So which is the right approach to acheive this?

Up until now I have done the HTTP module thing. Then I happened accross James Shaws new blog where he discusses this subject

http://www.coveryourasp.net/URLrewritingornot

He mentions using 404 handlers. I thought "that sounds easier, but won't it return a 404?". Well, James assures me it doesn't and he has tested the headers it returns too. That's good enough for me :O)

 

1 Comment

  • 404 handler all the way. No comparison, though it DOES require access to IIS to set the 404 handler to an .aspx page to do it properly. This may be an issue in hosting scenarios.



    Also that ugandan post above is pretty damn funny.

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