SEO friendly URLs with IIS

Hello,

I’m a web designer looking for a standards-based CMS platform to use for developing client websites. MODx looks great, but I can’t find much in the way of documentation about the way it handles friendly URLs. Can this be done (simply and reliably) with IIS or does it require Apache?

Thank you.

Apache is much better in this regard, though it can be done with IIS and the appropriate add-ons.

Thanks for your reply. Apache isn’t really an option for us as we have so many servers and sites running IIS.

What are the add-ons you refer to? Does it work reliably and well with them? (We were considering Drupal but that fell over with this particular requirement)

On my hosting servers i purchased this software http://www.isapirewrite.com, you will need to speak to your web host to see if they can obtain this or have a suitable replacement http://www.OneSmartHost.co.uk is currently in Modx using ISAPI Rewrite and works a treat

Hi, I’m new to MODx but I’ve succesfully installed it on Windows 2003 (IIS 6) with Friendly URLs on. I’ve followed the directions of this post http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,3119.msg22523.html#msg22523 and it worked for me, although I have to say that I have complete control over my server. I don’t have any experience on hosted environments.

As far as I know MODx handles the rewriting of the URL *before* any response is sent to the visitor (user, search engine, etc.) so there would be no problem with IIS sending an 404 header thus no ranking would be negatively affected. Again, I don’t know this for sure but when I check my IIS logs there are no 404/405 responses.

From past experience forms did not work this way with IIS 404 and 405, when i last tried it IIS seemed to discard the form data by the time modx got the page to process it, which resulted in forms not working.

Have you tested this? When i get time tomorrow i might try again in the latest modx version

Quote from: awardle at Feb 16, 2007, 11:07 PM

From past experience forms did not work this way with IIS 404 and 405, when i last tried it IIS seemed to discard the form data by the time modx got the page to process it, which resulted in forms not working.

Have you tested this? When i get time tomorrow i might try again in the latest modx version

I haven’t, and I’m having trouble with web user login (a topic that you already comented here http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,7667.msg53846.html#msg53846).

I look forward to know the results of you test.

carlosma.

Quote from: awardle at Feb 16, 2007, 06:55 PM

On my hosting servers i purchased this software http://www.isapirewrite.com, you will need to speak to your web host to see if they can obtain this or have a suitable replacement http://www.OneSmartHost.co.uk is currently in Modx using ISAPI Rewrite and works a treat

Hi Guys,

Great that this topic has sprung back into life! I must admit I’d actually given up on MODx as this thread hadn’t yielded anything helpful and seemed to have died. I just assumed it wasn’t do-able.

It looks like you have a solution with this software. Any problems with it? It looks as if the 404 method may also be a possibility but there seems to be some problems with it. I’m reluctant to start with problems before I even set out so I’m not keen to pursue this route - I can’t see any point if the isaprewrite solution works perfectly. Is that the case?

Hi Timfel,

I found that using the 404 and 405 method when using forms IIS would dump the data before MODx could process it which resulted in the forms not working.

If it’s a single site on your server you can use the ISAPI Rewrite lite version which is for one site only and free!!

Once you install this on your server or find a host who has it, the rest is very easy.

Steps

1) Point 404 and 405 to index.php
2) in the wwwroot folder create a file called "httpd.ini" and add the following contents

[ISAPI_Rewrite]
# 3600 = 1 hour
CacheClockRate 3600

RepeatLimit 32
# Block external access to the httpd.ini and httpd.parse.errors files
RewriteRule /httpd(?:\.ini|\.parse\.errors).* / [F,I,O]

# Block external access to the Helper ISAPI Extension
RewriteRule .*\.isrwhlp / [F,I,O]

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond Method GET|HEAD

RewriteRule /(?!(?:manager|assets)/)(.*)\.html(?:\?(.*))? /index.php?q=$1?2&$2: [I,L,U]

3) Log into MODx manager -> Click Administration -> System Configuration -> Friendly URL Settings

My Settings are:

Use Friendly URLS = yes
Prefix for friendly URLS =
Suffic for friendly URLS = .html

Let me know how you get on, with the above settings FURLS work perfectly and in my webstats It logs the actual page name called and not a 404 error page, also forms work perfectly.

Thanks Aaron,

That sounds great and it makes MODx a possibility for us. No problem installing the software as they are our own servers. I’ll let you know how I get on but it won’t be for a week or so. Thanks for your help.