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question - time/cost to do custom urls

by jimgk
9 replies
i am in talks with a local website design firm to develop a website for me that will be database driven and ths my urls will be database driven as well. but i prefer these database driven urls be converted to custom urls.

this website designer is avoiding telling me directly what he charges PER custom url. his programmer said he does some sort of redirect on the server, so my guess it is a 5-10 minute process per url to convert from database driven to custom.

i know of a local websites that have hundreds of custom urls and i know this guy did not pay $50 per each. wat is a reasonable price to pay? $5, $10, other. and how long does it take to program this per url?

any other input would be greatly appreciated!

for example, a database driven url might read like this

www. dogs .com /index.cfm?ref=50100
vs
www. dogs .com /blue-dogs

thanks
jim
#custom #question #time or cost #urls
  • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
    This guy is totally ripping you off, its a simple permalink fix. I design sites for many local businesses and can make you a site, or at least give you some advise. See my signature, and if you contact me mention the Warrior Forum and I will give you a deal.
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    P.S. If you found my post useful, please click the "Thanks" button below...
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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    Some open source CMS (content management systems) do that out of the box for free...

    Just saying.

    And it should not be done individually for each page/subpage url - but through a script/code for all of them.
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    • Profile picture of the author jimgk
      my guy acts like it is very time consuming and says it is done on the server side - but i do not know what that means - since all programming ends up on the server i suppose? i think this guy has not made it into the 21st century in regards to this once very special feature - thus - is still trying to market it is a pricey add on. most others charge more for a website with custom urls included and others talk about custom urls as if they are made of GOLD. thank you both. this could wind up being a deal breaker for my and this web designer??
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      • Profile picture of the author Tashi Mortier
        Okay, it's time to give you some technical knowledge.

        Basically such custom URLs work like this:

        You have some sort of rewrite engine in the web server that rewrites URLs to other URLs and then processes the request. This engine gets programmed via a .htaccess file (in Apache's (common web server) case, could also be done in the main config file).

        You can define different rules and I guess what he does is define a rule for every URL, which is totally unnecessary, not to say something I'd charge an ongoing customer money for.

        This problem can be solved with one simple rule that tells the web server "Every URL that looks like domainname.com followed by a slash (/) and text should be rewritten to the form domainname.com/index.php?page=text"

        In your case the problem could be solved with a simple database that maps all the URLs to their ids. Then you just forward all requests to a simple script (using a rule like above). This script then forwards the user to the actual page (or you modify the index.cfm to accept the text snippets itself).

        I hope that helps you to outweigh if it's worth to pay the developer for each URL.
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        • Profile picture of the author wayfarer
          Originally Posted by Tashi Mortier View Post

          You can define different rules and I guess what he does is define a rule for every URL, which is totally unnecessary, not to say something I'd charge an ongoing customer money for.
          This is especially true if you are doing this with the .htaccess file. .htaccess is loaded and processed every time a request is made to the server. If you are using Apache's configuration files, say in a virtualhost configuration, it is only loaded once, when the web server starts, so it is much more efficient. If you are not on a dedicated box or at least a VPS, you won't have access to these files, however. Even then, it would be absurd to add another rule and restart the server every time you want to add another page.

          The only sustainable solution, as pointed out, is to do everything dynamically. With my own framework, everything is kept in the database and served out by template files. New pages are simply added to the database, allowing them to grow as large as is needed.

          My whole framework's .htaccess file looks like this:

          Code:
          ##
# Start Framework
##

#Required on some servers
Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule ^(.+).html$ index.php?request=$1 [nc,pt,qsa]
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

##
# End Framework
##
          Basically, every request for a .html file goes to index.php instead, as the 'request' parameter.

          I normally only keep 2 actual PHP files in the root directory, index.php and 404.php. It is actually possible to funnel everything through index.php, but I find this approach to be less messy.
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          I build web things, server things. I help build the startup Veenome. | Remote Programming Jobs
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          • Profile picture of the author jimgk
            guys - thanks for all the comments - if i were a web guy i might know what you are talking about - but bottom line is this sounds like a relatively easy task for a web designer. my guy has his own servers but i do not know what platform he is using or on. sounds to me like my guy is pretty good on some features but this one seems like he could use some classes on the latest trends in custom urls. that said, i think he has a good handle on the ecommerce piece of my site. pluses and minuses with everything in life i suppose : ))
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  • Profile picture of the author jimgk
    i met with my website guy today and he said he will be quoting me a cost for custom urls in quantities of 10. but he is gonna talk to his programmer first because i showed him a local site with 1000 custom urls ( he was obviously stunned ) and i know this guy did not pay $10 each = $10k for 1000 custom urls. there has got to be an easier cheaper way to mass produce custom urls for a website - as mentioned above.

    /thanks-blue-dogs-jim
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  • Profile picture of the author SmartWeb
    Hey JimKelly,

    This is infact a less then min job for one URL.
    The webmaster has to edit .htaccess file present on server to write the old and new URL.
    that's it...
    It only costs 1 min to write few URL redirections.
    I have made many modifications like this for my clients.

    Let me know if you still paying for it... I can do it FREE for you. its a 5 min job for me..
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    Smart Web Solutions
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  • Profile picture of the author oknoorap
    use .httaccess for php, why don't you use framework like codeigniter, codeigniter is awesome framework, take a look their documentation.
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