I did this at a company I worked for in order to catch error pages. What we did was grab the path after the domain and run that through our search tool automatically. Our search tool kept track of common searches and especially ones that returned zero results, so we had a table where we could set up common searches and specify where to direct them to. We ended up using all of that in combination with "advertising" urls (much like www.dell.com/tv ) but we had hundreds of different ads going out to different magazines and management wanted to track the response for each ad. So, we gave them the ability to create these "search" urls on their own and when people came to that url, it would run the 404 page which would in turn run the search for that term and jump them to the appropriate page. It was all pretty slick and was transparent to the user. The only thing that sucked was any time you ran a log analyzer you had a ton of 404 errors which looked bad, but that wasn't a problem unless we showed those reports to management and then that was always a red flag to them. Once we explained, that seemed to help though.
John Burns Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX Developer Wyle Laboratories, Inc. | Web Developer -----Original Message----- From: Michael Dinowitz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 12:17 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: URL masking and application.cfc I've been thinking of a new method of presenting dynamic content, specifically the list archives. At the moment you get to a single post by passing an ID on the url. Even if this is 'hidden' using SES Urls or the like, your still passing something. My idea is to use the application.cfc to 'catch' a specific type of 404 error and in place of an error, run a page. Take for example this url: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/messages.cfm/forumid:4/threadid:38 946 In its place I want to use this url: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/messages_4_38946.cfm When the onRequestStart or onRequest action is run, I'd like to change the page requested from messages_4_38946.cfm to messages.cfm and turn the rest of the url into the proper variables. Looks totally do-able and I'll be playing with it tonight. The reason I'm mentioning it is to see if anyone else has done this already, anyone finds this interesting and wants to try it and anyone wants to comment on it. I think it's a nice usage of application.cfc, but if others find it to be flawed, I'd like to hear it early on. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Logware (www.logware.us): a new and convenient web-based time tracking application. Start tracking and documenting hours spent on a project or with a client with Logware today. Try it for free with a 15 day trial account. http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=67 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:198683 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
