Hi all

My client uses Vignette and has numeric URLs for the content pages. Also the URLs have to be recycled, which means that a URL, for eg:

http://www.domainname.com.au/sports/0,10217,17479660-2,00.html

...might point to a "Soccer story" today and three months from now might point to "Wimbledon Finals". This is due to Vignette, they tell me.

I am looking at re-writing URLs for them as a way to make them user friendly like http://www.domainname.com.au/sports/soccer-2005/argentina-wins.htm and keeping them from being recycled.

I have never done re-writing before. Their server is Apache running on Linux.

Has anyone tried re-writing Vignette URLs. Does anyone have an estimate as to how long it take? I need to give them a quote. Is it too complicated? My team has programming knowledge but wondering if that is enough to help their programmers to re-write Vignette URLs.

Thanks in advance

It all comes down to variables that need to be passed in the clean urls.

Just by looking at the first example url it looks like the variables are being seperated by ,'s. If thats the case then you are in for a tough time if all those values are needed.

With that being said. Mod rewrites aren't that tough.

1. Plan the new urls

2. Rewrite the rules and add them to the .htaccess

3. Type the new url in the browser.

if they work

4. Change the links to output the new urls

if they don't go back to 2. and check your syntax.


The best thing about mod rewrite is you can test it on a live site without screwing things up. Well if you rewrite your rule wrong you'll cause a 500 error and bring the site down. But if your rules are correct you can test them by just typing them in. if they work that way change the output code and you're done.