[fixed] Google and ever-changing URLs ?

[jared]

While trying to figure out why Google indexes most parts of my website, but only the index page of the gallery, I happened across this:

" Just one bad thing about Coppermine - all image URL's is changed when somebody adds new image(s) to gallery. All links are relative. So, when, for example Google indexes the site with some image links, after some days they become wrong and visitors from Google goes to wrong place... Guys, please fix this "

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:ao7ByatPXkEJ:www.hotscripts.com/cgi-bin/review.cgi%3FID%3D26670+coppermine+google+listing&hl=en

which is Google's cache of a page on hotscripts.com. Curiously enough, this particular post has disappeared from the live page at hotscripts.

Could this be why Google doesn't index my gallery?

If not, what could be the reason?  I'm stumped, and haven't found much about this problem searching the board here.

Thanks!!

-jared

[mobile]

I think there´s not much you can do about this. Some URLs, like the galleries (http://www.your-site.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=2) are URLs that dont change.

On the other hand Google and other SEs aren´t that good in indexing dynamic pages anyway.

[Joachim Müller]

you might want to take a look at the mod_rewrite feature of the apache webserver (if your webhost let's you have it). There's a thread on the mods board dealing with mod_rewrite (search engine freindly urls).

Joachim

[jared]

Joachim:  Thank you for the advice and direction, but I don't think it's a mod_rewrite issue.  Google has indexed many other such pages from my site.  (search for site:www.croppinparadise.com to see for yourself), just none from the gallery.

I also run osCommerce on my site, and have many many "dynamic" URLs from osCommerce indexed in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

For the gallery, though, Google has only linked the gallery index page.

Let me give an example.  One of my albums is named "Bright and Cheery".  If I search Google for the following
      site:www.croppinparadise.com bright cheery
I get back exactly one link.

It seems like the Coppermine URLs are not just dynamic in the sense that they have a ? in them, and are query results, but that when more images are added, the URLs to existing images change.  For example, the *latest* uploaded image will always have pos=0.  If someone bookmarks, or Google indexes, pos=0 may not be the same thing tomorrow as it is today.

Is it possible to have pos=0 ALWAYS be the *first* uploaded image, and pos=1 be the 2nd, pos=2 be the 3rd, etc?  It seems that this would take care of the eternally-changing URL problem.

-jared

[Tarique Sani]

This has been solved in the CVS - now it uses PID - so pos is ignored

[jared]

Nice!  Any idea when that will become general release? (not looking for specific date, just rough idea)

-jared

[Tranz]

There is no idea.

[jared]

I understand.  I'm on 1.3.0, and am just trying to plan when to upgrade.  I am not experiencing any of the bugs fixed by 1.3.2 (at least not noticeably) but would really like this fix.

It's good to hear that it's fixed, now I just need to be patient, I suppose.

Is there a chance that this particular CVS checkin has enough associated details to post here?

-jared

[Tarique Sani]

Is there a chance that this particular CVS checkin has enough associated details to post here?

Well currently it works only with the classic theme - someone will have to modify all the themes

[jared]

Is it only a change to the theme?  If that's the case, then I'll happily take the classic theme and skin it to my taste.  Or, maybe I could do some of the theme translation.  I'm not the best programmer in the world, but I can diff and hack until things work (or at least they appear to work). 

Hmmm.. maybe after that comment, someone else would prefer to do it.  If not, I'm still willing. 

The changes are just to the theme?  No DB structure changes, etc?

That doesn't sound too bad . . . (if you can confirm that that's the only place where the fix was needed to be made).

-jared

[Tarique Sani]

The changes are just to the theme? No DB structure changes, etc?

yes only change to theme.php and displayimage.php - nothing else

[jared]

Forgive my ignorance, but would these be the right files to download?

theme.php: 
File: [cvs] / coppermine / devel / themes / classic / theme.php (download)
Revision: 1.20, Wed Sep 29 22:26:17 2004 UTC (2 weeks, 4 days ago) by nibbler999
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: HEAD
Changes since 1.19: +2 -2 lines

Renamed $time_start to $cpg_time_start to avoid variable collision with smf.
-----------

displayimage.php:
File: [cvs] / coppermine / devel / displayimage.php (download)
Revision: 1.65, Sun Oct 10 11:57:21 2004 UTC (8 days, 8 hours ago) by gaugau
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: HEAD
Changes since 1.64: +6 -6 lines

minor cosmetical fix
-------------

If so, I'll have a go at it.


Thanks!

-jared

[jared]

The change seems like the one titled "Hack for making Meta album URLs absolute"

I'll give it a shot and see if I can take just that one fix into 1.30. I'd love to go to 1.32, but I don't have time to re-hack it to put it back where mine is at the moment.

Hopefully I can make just this one fix work.

Thanks!!

-jared

[jared]

I tried the CVS changes, and they didn't work for me.  Inspecting them a little more closely, I don't understand how it *could* have fixed it.

The value that keeps changing is the pos value.  All the new code seems to do is add a pid value to the right of the pos value.  The pos value still changes, and therefore, the URL still changes.

Is there a working gallery somewhere that has this fix in it?

Perhaps I'm just not understanding the fix properly. 

Tarique, you were the one that checked in the code, do you have a gallery somewhere that I can see the fix in action?

Thanks!

-jared

[Tarique Sani]

http://tariquesani.net

[jared]

Tarique, thank you for the link to your site.  I can see that the problem I'm having is that the pid= value is not getting set properly on my site.  I'll investigate further.

-jared

[jared]

Grrrrrrrr.

The links work if I manually enter the pid value (i.e. type it in the URL bar), but my links are not getting generated properly.  The URLs end with pid= rather than pid=150 or some other value.

-jared

[jared]

AH HA!

There was also a required addition to include/functions.inc.php .  Once I found and added that, it works!

Thanks, Tarique!

-jared

[Tarique Sani]

Oops! see the reason why I do not advocate partial CVS check outs ...

[jared]

yes, but I got it working and learned some in the process.

I also think I might install CVS locally to keep track of my own changes to my website (osCommerce + phpBB + cpg).  I liked viewcvs.  I'd not used that before.  It was very intuitive.  I wish I'd started my website by putting everything into a local CVS server.  It would have made it *much* easier to keep track of all the changes I've made.

Thanks again!

-jared