This page is showing an error....why?

[watto]

I recently had a mod_rewrite done at my sitewww.business-trader.com.au.

Now, it seems to be working fine, however I noticed that if I book mark an advertisement page ( www.business-trader.com.au/buy_sell_business_australia/Impressive+Resumes/1553/Services/0/1/index.html ) it will display as an error once clicked on.

My programmer told me this is because it is a protected page.

Why is this happening and what is a protected page?

[studiokraft]

Now, it seems to be working fine, however I noticed that if I book mark an advertisement page ( www.business-trader.com.au/buy_sell_business_australia/Impressive+Resumes/1553/Services/0/1/index.html ) it will display as an error once clicked on.

My programmer told me this is because it is a protected page.

Why is this happening and what is a protected page?

Hello!

"mod_rewrite" is used when you want to transform a URL into another. Most likely your programmer is using mod_rewrite to transform:

http://www.business-trader.com.au/buy_sell_business_australia/Impressive+Resumes/1553/Services/0/1/index.html

Into something like:

http://www.business-trader.com.au/addshow.php?section=buy_sell_business_australia&advertiser=Impressive+Resumes&adid=1553  etc. etc.

There are several possibilites to explain a "protected page", and probably a lot more that I haven't considered as well:

Depending on how your system is set up, a "protected page" could be a page that only certain users can access, or for tracking purposes, a page that is designed to only be displayed once.

There are some numbers in the URL that you provided, and it is possible that one or more of them references data in your web site that the programmer has deemed "protected", or perhaps is a session ID number of some sort that becomes invalid after a set period of time.

It is also possible that the programmer had only allowed access to the "advertising pages" from your web site domain, so clicking on a link to them without first visiting the main site causes an error.

If you are referring to the errors displayed at the top of the page:

Warning: implode() [function.implode]: Bad arguments.

This means that the programmer was expecting some data to be there that wasn't. The errors that follow also seem to be a result of the missing data.

In any case, it doesn't sound as though the issue you are experiencing with bookmarking the links from your site is directly related to mod_rewrite, unless the "rules" that were set for the rewrite do not include information that the addshow.php script was expecting to see, or if the rules for mod_rewrite expect the referring domain to be your web site (only allowing clicks from your site)

Without seeing the setup for the rewrite itself, it is difficult to tell. I hope this wasn't too confusing. ;)

[watto]

Thanks for your reply and yes this does make sense.

I do recall my programmer telling me that these pages must be clicked on through another page from my site. He said there is a proceedure that needs to take place in order to reach this page.

So my next question is 'what will happen when I rank in google for one of these listing pages and someone clicks on it? Will it display an error or will it take them to another page at my site?

regards

watto

[Vectorman211]

The operation is seemless to the outside world. There is no way anyone (including search engines) can tell you are using ModRewrite. So if the above link is correct then the answer to your question is no.

[studiokraft]

So my next question is 'what will happen when I rank in google for one of these listing pages and someone clicks on it? Will it display an error or will it take them to another page at my site?

Hello again,

Unless these pages are contained in your Google SiteMap, or have been submitted directly to Google in some other fashion, Googlebot should follow the path that your programmer has determined and therefore should not display the error. (Your programmer mentioned that there is another page that needs to be visited prior to accessing these "advertising pages")

If Googlebot accesses the pages directly, thereby acting like your web browser when you click on the link, it will "see" the same page that you do, including the error messages.