21 intuitive URL and CMS

Something I am wondering about:

Does your CMS generate static HTML files that are written to a directroy tree in the webserver (and thus the tree is managemed by the CMS), or does Brian have some super nifty trick to retrieve content from a database using an ASP page based upon the requested URL?

(in other words: how to avoid something like www.alistapart.com/index.asp?article=tacklingusability )

posted at 02:27 am on November 18, 2003 by Martijn ten Napel

22 Re: intuitive URL and CMS

I’m not sure if they are using the same method nowadays, but:

• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/succeed/

• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/urls/

posted at 07:21 am on November 18, 2003 by Anne

23 Re: Does Brian have some super nifty trick?

Hi Martijn —

Since I’m using a Microsoft IIS Web server, I use ISAPI Rewrite (http://www.isapirewrite.com/) to map clean URLs like /articles/fir/ and /topics/server-side/ to Active Server Pages with query string parameters. They give you a nice regular expression testing application so you can determine whether your patterns are set up correctly without having to try loading URLs on a live server. (It keeps all of your test URLs out of your traffic logs.)

If you use Apache, mod_rewrite will give you the same regular expression-based URL pre-processing abilities.

PS – I hadn’t seen those two ALA articles on URL-remapping, but they both use the same tactics I use on ALA today.

posted at 07:50 am on November 18, 2003 by Brian Alvey

24 Re: intuitive URL's and CMS

Thank you for the prompt reply Anne and Brian. It’s an issue that had presented itself to me just this week ;-)

posted at 03:42 pm on November 18, 2003 by Martijn ten Napel

25 re: intuitive urls

For additional ALA coverage of the intersection between usability and URLs, please also see:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashforward/

posted at 04:37 pm on November 18, 2003 by apartness

26 Helpful words

I myself love what you have done with the redesign. It has a certain shine over the whole site, and the transition from page to page, in usability terms, is seamless. At the moment, I’m redesigning (designing if you consider the fact my site has used PHPNuke for the past few months – I know, shocking) my own site (http://www.cmcore.co.uk/newsite) and the pointers have been very helpful. Keep up the good work.

posted at 08:17 pm on November 29, 2003 by Dan Abrey

27 Usability problems

For my usability is a permanent nightmare. I use to redesign my site every 3-4 month. Wuth the every new version I try to make it better, increase usability, make it more usefull for visitors. But I can’t be shure I succedd each time. There is a very thin line in usability incrieasing. You can redisign your site making it more usefull as you thnik but you are not. And to be shure that new design are more usefull to visitors you have to ask them and make an opinion from their answers.

Peter Bacon
http://www.watch-replica.net

posted at 04:20 pm on January 13, 2004 by Peter Bacon

28 puzzled by background-image

It must be something basic, but I’ve missed it…

I thought background-images were rendered at their dimensions: yet the background-image on this site appears to scale, vertically.

The shaded background gif is 200 pixels high, when downloaded and examined. Yet it appears to scale to the height of the screen, at both 800 × 600, and 1024 × 768.

Could someone set me straight?

posted at 07:35 pm on January 15, 2004 by chris tillam