Articles--BrowseArticles

papalolo22 · November 9th, 2009, 02:22 PM

I just downloaded this application, and I also purchased the book. I got it running a few hours ago. (VB) I see the links pointing to the individual article "Title" in the BrowseArticle.aspx page throw a 404 error when clicked.
Why not a direct URL on the querystring, with a categoryID on the BrowseArticle.aspx, rather a SEOFriendlyURL?

adrianwhyte · June 8th, 2010, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by papalolo22

I just downloaded this application, and I also purchased the book. I got it running a few hours ago. (VB) I see the links pointing to the individual article "Title" in the BrowseArticle.aspx page throw a 404 error when clicked.
Why not a direct URL on the querystring, with a categoryID on the BrowseArticle.aspx, rather a SEOFriendlyURL?

RE: Your Question: Why not have direct URL rather than a SEO Friendly one?:
There are, according to this and another Wrox publication ”Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.Net”, strong advantages in having SEO friendly Urls. Briefly they are these:
- There is still a small inherent advantage in Search Engine Rankings
- They are more attention grabbing, when appearing either in search result pages or links from other sites, thereby increasing your “click-through rate” (the rate at which links to your site are clicked on) which also increases your search-engine ranking.

RE: 404 error that you were getting:
The download source code for the VB version would appear to have a bug, which stops these links from working.
I got the same error. The problem seems to be this: In the Helpers.VB Module the following code (from line 434) simply doesn’t work:

Code:

    Public Shared Function SEOFriendlyURL(ByVal vURL As String, ByVal vExtension As String) As String
        If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(vURL) Then
            Return ReplaceInvalidURLCharacters(vURL, "-").ToLower 'vURL.Replace(" ", "-") & vExtension
            'Return sURL.ToLower
        End If
        Return String.Empty
    End Function

    Public Shared Function ReplaceInvalidURLCharacters(ByVal vURL As String, ByVal vReplacement As String) As String
        'Return RegexReplace(vURL, "<|>|#|%|{|}|^|~|[|]", vReplacement)
        Return RegexReplace(vURL, "[^\w]", vReplacement)
    End Function

Replace the above two routines with:

Code:

    Public Shared Function SEOFriendlyURL(ByVal vURL As String, ByVal vExtension As String) As String
        If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(vURL) Then
            Dim sURL As String = vURL.Replace("\", "/")
            sURL = ReplaceInvalidURLCharacters(sURL, "-").ToLower & vExtension 'vURL.Replace(" ", "-") & vExtension
            Return sURL.ToLower
            'Return sURL.ToLower
        End If
        Return String.Empty
    End Function

    Public Shared Function ReplaceInvalidURLCharacters(ByVal vURL As String, ByVal vReplacement As String) As String
        'Return RegexReplace(vURL, "<|>|#|%|{|}|^|~|[|]", vReplacement)
        Return RegexReplace(vURL, "[^/|^\w]", vReplacement)
    End Function

This makes sure the Urls get rewritten properly.

Then in TBHBLL\Config\ConfigSection.vb line 19

Code:

    <ConfigurationProperty("devSiteName", DefaultValue:="BeerHouse35")> _

Insert a forward slash to make it

Code:

   <ConfigurationProperty("devSiteName", DefaultValue:="BeerHouse35/")> _

This ensures that the re-written URL gets mapped.

This is a quick fix, although there is probably a tidier way of doing it.

Incidentally, the process of URL rewriting is simplified in Asp.Net 4. (Look at http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archi...-0-series.aspx)