Content negotiation allows you to hide file extensions, clean up your URLs, and serve pages with different file formats, in different languages, or even with different character sets based on the individual user’s browser preferences. With PageXchanger, your IIS Web applications will be more secure, more versatile, and easier to maintain. This updated Port80 tool (new 2.0 version released today) separates content from the underlying Web technology, providing a powerful form of content negotiation offering major benefits in terms of security, usability, and SEO.
Before we start...
If you need a full URL cleaning solution, stop reading – this tool won’t get the job done – check out this Google query.
For Apache users, visit the mod_rewrite project to learn more.
Now, if you have IIS and are still with us, let’s continue into the realm of pageXchanging:
A Web site without file extensions is a wondrous thing.
Perhaps the best-known application of content negotiation is that it allows pages to be served without file extensions. In a traditional site, the user must type in, for example, http://www.domain.com/page.asp. But, with PageXchanger, the same page can be served with http://www.domain.com/page:
- The URL is shorter and easier for your users to remember and cut & paste – better for the marketing folks. Also, sending a visitor a 404 error just because they can’t remember the file extension is unacceptable –- and easily avoided through content negotiation.
- Potential intruders no longer see the clues that your site is built using ASP (and, by extension, IIS!) –- or anything that can be discerned from the extension in the source code. After firewalls, IDSs and ServerMasking, leaving .asp on the end of all your URLs is about like locking your car and leaving the keys in the door.
- You can change your technology platform at any time –- say to PHP or ColdFusion -- without having to update your URLs. If you’re at all concerned with SEO, you’ve spent a lot of time building links and submitting URLs to search engines and pay-per-click advertising. PageXchanger guarantees that those links will stay the same no matter what’s going on on the server side. Persistence is a good thing (resistance is futile, however – or so someone said).
Serve the best version of a resource for each and every user.
PageXchanger’s ability to remove file extensions goes far beyond just cleaning up URLs:
- Let’s say your http://www.domain.com/page includes a couple images. Normally, you would have to pick out a single version of those images -– gif or jpeg, for example –- and send that one version out to all users. But, through content negotiation, a PageXchanger-equipped site chooses the best format for each user’s browser.
- What if http://www.domain.com/page includes a downloadable video? We’ve all seen sites where the user must choose the correct format -– WMV, Real, or QuickTime. Content negotiation allows you to automatically send Mac browsers Mac-friendly QuickTime, while PC users get WMV files! Fewer choices mean fewer chances to make mistakes – on your side and especially on the user’s side. Of course, your mileage may vary here based on the browser (Firefox provides more specific default user preference data in the request headers than IE).
Your Web site should speak your user’s language... all of them.
Traditional Web sites have two choices when it comes to serving multi-lingual content. Maintain multiple domains – http://www.domain.com, http://www.domain.fr, http://www.domain.jp, and so on. Or, send everyone to one domain written in one language and ask them to pick the right translation (did we mention that more choices mean more chances for abandonment?). But, with content negotiation and a simple check of the browser preferences, you can send your users your Web site in their language, using their character/language preferences:
- You can send every one of your users a link to http://www.domain.com. Your English-speaking customers will see the English version, your French customers will see it in French, and your Japanese customers will get the Japanese version -- with the Japanese character set to boot! For that matter, your Japanese user could send a link to his/her colleague in France, and using the same URL, they will both get a version they can understand.
- Back to SEO matters, it certainly couldn’t hurt your Google Page Rank (and search results) to have http://www.domain.com linked to sites around the world, instead of divided among .com, .fr, .jp, and so on.
- Most importantly, it is your responsibility to show your customers that you speak their language. PageXchanger and content negotiation makes site translation truly transparent (once you have hired the translator).
Thanks for listening, and we hope that you will give pageXchanging a spin on your IIS Web site and Web-based applications. And hey, it even supports IIS 6 now (whaddaya know?).
Best,
Port80 Software