need help with mod_rewrite

[scottsanders]

Hi,

I am trying to make profile pages for members on my site, and I want to use mod_rewrite to load specific content on their profile pages, from different links throughout the website. The catch, however, is that I don't want search engines to view each different link as a different web page.

Here's my page (without mod_rewrite):

mysite.com/profile.php?member=peter&tab=photos
mysite.com/profile.php?member=peter&tab=biography

The page has both sections loaded, but separated by a tabs using jQuery, so you click through the tabs to view the loaded information on the page (no ajax). I just want to use the "tab" parameter to tell the page which tab to make active first. Here is the ideal rewrite I'd like:

mysite.com/peter#photos
mysite.com/peter#biography

But I cannot find a way to do this with mod_rewrite. I want to avoid doing this:

mysite.com/peter/photos
mysite.com/peter/biography

because a search engine would see the two links as two separate pages, and I would halve my SEO for links directing to www.mysite.com/peter

Is there some way I can use mod_rewrite to tell my source page which tab of content to make visible first, without search engines viewing the url's as different pages?

Hope this makes sense :)
Scott

[djr33]

1. #name is an anchor on a page. It may not be possible to use this (and probably would be a bad idea) for a "real" link. I'm not sure it's even transmitted as part of the request. Basically it means "go to the URL before the #, then jump to the part of the page with the label from after the #", so it's completely based on the browser. Note how the page jumps after it finishes loading.

2. I don't know much about mod_rewrite, trying to learn more, but what I do know can be found here:
http://dynamicdrive.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51923

If you know php well but not mod_rewrite that's a way around it, or at least some more info on how to approach this in a basic way.


If you want the search engine to see it as the same page, then the only way to do that is to use something that is not part of the URL: either get variables (?v=1) or anchors (which can't be used for this exactly).

So I suggest just simplifying the system:
rewrite your code so that you have shorter get variables, and just go with that:
/yourpage.php?peter

PHP:
if (isset($_GET['peter']))......
Or, use $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] which would in that example be 'peter'.

Or something like that. It's a starting point.