Usability wise, it's a good idea to have human-readable URLs (Google will also add extra weight for keywords in the URL), so if you're doing this to create friendlier URLs then I'd say it's all good.
To stop the validator/robots/etc. seeing it as a 404 error, you need to send a 200 OK HTTP status code, you can do that in PHP using this line of code:
header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK");
If you're just doing it to fix a broken link, then using a '301 Moved Permanently' redirect would be more appropriate, like so:
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://example.com/my/new/url.html");
I'm not 100% sure how search engine robots, etc. would treat it, but I imagine they would all index the location.
Hope this helps, if it makes no sense, I blame the cold & flu pills :)
On 4/12/06, Joseph Bernhardt <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I run an apache server and utilize the .htaccess file to run a php
script on a 404 error. This php script grabs the contents of the
current uri to display information. (example:
www.joughslife.com/Rockport.html) My question is, will this have any
effect as far as usability? Also, the w3c validator was unable to
recognize the page as anything other than 404; will other spiders/bots
be able to recognize content? Thank you, as always!
--
Lindsay Evans
http://lindsayevans.com/
