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Image file extension in page URLs and search engines?

wibbi Member
in General support

I have a question about the URLs in relation to search engines, which always have the extension as the file extension.

https://www.example.com/album/IMG001.JPG

This URL looks like it's leading to a JPG file. But it leads to a webpage. Do not recognize the search engine as a fake?

The additional file extension .html or .php I find ugly.

https://www.example.com/album/IMG001.JPG.php

Is the file extension really that important? The path to the file is in the URL. It could just be that two files with the same name and different file extensions are stored in the same folder. How often does this happen?

I do not want to hear now that it is OK, but like to be shown sources that it is not a problem. Especially for search engine ranking.

Plus theme: URL encoding?

Comments

  • sbillard Member

    It is possible for you to add a "suffix" to your page links. This is the general "mod_rewrite_suffix" setting. For instance you can make all these links show as ".htm" and they will look like normal web pages.

    It would be possible to omit the image suffix when there is no possibility of duplicate base file names. This has been done in a different implementation of zenphoto. With this change your example above would be
    https://www.example.com/album/IMG001.htm

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    edited February 2018

    This URL looks like it's leading to a JPG file. But it leads to a webpage. Do not recognize the search engine as a fake?

    Exactly this is why there is the rewrite suffix and why we recommend it. The image suffix is in there because you can have for example a jpg, a png and a gif with the same name except the suffix within one album. And of course Zenphoto also can handle other file "non image" file types.

    Try to search for e.g. showcase entries on our site via Google or else.

  • wibbi Member

    Phew, that's a tough message.
    Is this not possible?:
    https://www.example.com/album/IMG001
    OK, i have tested it and the htaccess rewrite it to
    https://www.example.com/album/IMG001/
    I'm not happy.

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer

    Well, it is not possible in Zenphoto. You need to know: Sbillard was once a major part of our team - you see a lot stuff we once did together - and left because of a fallout with one of us (which was neihter @fretzl nor me just to note) and started his own fork.

    We don't care or pay atention to this fork, it is a completely separate project and here you will not get any support for it.

    We actually consider to change the url structure for image pages in the next major release we are working on the behind the scenes (there will be soon a post about that). It is on the list among lots of other things and so much I can say it will be not the mentioned structure.

  • wibbi Member
    edited February 2018

    That's another strong message.
    I have also thought of a fork in which a few important little things to be repaired. URLs are absolutely the most important in a website. This is the address. Changes are always bad. You will not be found anymore. Search engines are too slow to re-index large websites. Old links in forums are then outdated. and so on. My htaccess is already huge to catch it all.
    I also thought of a simple standard responsive theme. That is important these days.
    What is the name of Sbillard Fork? Where can I find him?

    PS: There are many dead internal links on zenphoto.org and in searchengine results. This is not a good sign. Dead Links - Dead Website - Dead ZenPhoto.

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    edited February 2018

    What is the name of Sbillard Fork? Where can I find him?

    Sorry, search on GitHub and you will be able to find it. Again, it is not supported over here.

    Well, you are free to create your own fork and make your own changes you think you need. But don't expect we agree to everything or will incorporate it or support it over here. We will not make any signficiant changes in the 1.x release stream anymore. Otherwise we never get our planned major release ready (no, you cannot preview this) and we already changed a bunch of things internally which causes double work. We're not working full time here.

    I also thought of a simple standard responsive theme.

    Any third party theme contributed is welcome. Not everything must be included and we encourage anyone to create themes or plugins as he need himself (a new theme is planned for the major release though). Besides there are some responsive third party themes. If these don't fit your purpose, create your own.

    PS: There are many dead internal links on zenphoto.org and in searchengine results. This is not a good sign. Dead Links - Dead Website - Dead ZenPhoto.

    Of course we switched the forum software last year as the software used was abandoned. Therefore a lot internal forum links are outdated as there is no way to redirect them (besides a lot of old forum posts are outdated anyway).

  • wibbi Member

    Otherwise we never get our planned major release ready

    The next stronge message.
    When will it be released?

    any signficiant changes

    You create a new major release and I switch from an outdated Gallery3 to an outdated ZenPhoto. I do not think so exciting now. Better I wait and see what has been changed.

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    edited February 2018

    Sorry, we don't set any release date as we surely won't be able to actually keep it.

    You create a new major release and I switch from an outdated Gallery3 to an outdated ZenPhoto.

    Not really. You always have to update frequently and there always will be changes. We try to make that major release generally backward compatible (or provide help for this) with the then latest Zenphoto 1.x. The core functionality will not change actually. Updates on custom stuff may not be avoidable and some third party stuff may break if not updated by its authors. We try not to cause such a huge break like Gallery2 to 3 did (if I recall right reading about that).

  • wibbi Member
    edited February 2018

    We actually consider to change the url structure for image pages in the next major release

    Change the URL structure is more than an huge break in the core.
    I think you are not very interested in web addresses. This can also be seen in the many dead links to the documentation of ZenPhoto. This is a pity. I will not change addresses because I do not want to lose my search engine ranking.

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer

    That change would be an option actually. And even if it was not there would be some internal redirection. Zenphoto itself didn't change its url structure since the beginning (except on rss feeds and that some urls were add newly like articles and pages).

    We are of course interested in addresses but covering them from 10+ years has to be a balance of the work invested.

    As said links from the forum are sometimes outdated, yes. But you can and should directly search on our user guide. If you find any internal broken links there, let us know and we fix them.

  • wibbi Member

    Can you promise me that the URLs stay that way in the new major release?:
    example.com/album/subalbum/IMG0001.JPG

    Now I have a very specific question, as I intend to do a core hack, with which I am also satisfied with ZenPhoto.

    Can you tell me where the codepoint is, where the Request URI is being processed for the first time and differentiated between album and image?

    I already have a small core hack that removes the image file extension in the URL. Albums Pages are displayed correctly. Image Pages not. Since the image file extension is missing in the URL, I want to add it to the core code in the right place. To my advantage I have with all my pictures only a single file extension in uppercase.

    I'm looking for the codepoint to which I can add the file extension, since it has already been removed in the URL.

    That would be perfect!

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    edited February 2018

    Yes, the standard url will still stay example.com/album/subalbum/IMG0001.JPG<rewritesuffix> with an option to use another url structure (we have not yet exactly decided but certainly the album path will still be the base)

    There are several places where you need to change things for the image page url

    • image class getLink() method creates the object based link. There is a getLink filter that can change this via a class level plugin.
    • functions-controller.php controlls some rewrite stuff and the actual page context setup.
    • several other places (functions and some plugins) for sure as well I have to look up as I don't remember them off hand.

    Hope that helps so far a bit.

    Please note if you encounter issues with this hack we most likely won't really support it and you will have to re-do it on every update ;-)

  • wibbi Member

    I think there are not the codepoints.
    Your use the URL (Request_URl ?) to differentiate between album or image page and extract the image file name from it. exactly? I search this point.

  • wibbi Member

    i have found it...

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer

    Good, Zenphoto is complex so I don't know everything off hand anymore ;-)

  • wibbi Member

    A good documentation saves a lot of work.

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer

    You will surely understand that I not always can neither remember everything offhand nor have the time to look up everything right away.

  • wibbi Member

    Oops, you got that wrong. It was a compliment!
    Documentation is good and the documentation is good.

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer

    Ah, okay, sorry, there is always room for improvement naturally. Then thanks! ;-)

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