[nycbug-talk] Apache rewrite rules

[Rodrique Heron]

michael wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Apr 2007 16:58:25 -0400
> "Sachin Thareja" <thareja.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>>> Just out of curiosity, why would some department even need special
>>> URL rewrite rules?  Does the webapp demand their use?
>>>       
>> If they want to do this:
>>
>> http://company.com/aweseome-product
>>
>> -> Actually rewrites to:
>>
>> http://company.com/some/deep/link/possibly/even/to/not/such/an/awesome/product.htm
>>
>> and the department creates/does away with their products at a rate of
>>     
>>> once a week, enough for the local sysadmin to look for alternatives
>>>       
>> to this weekly cycle of pestering... But that's just my point of
>> view... ;-)
>>
>> -Sachin
>>     
>
> Wow, it seems like continuously editting the web server config (and
> restarting/reloading the config) each time somebody builds a new web
> page.. and wants a purdy URL; is a senseless waste of time for the
> sysadmin.  On top of others saying that a poorly written (or
> poorly tested) config can reak havoc; it is probably a maintenance
> nightmare.  The web application should handle that.
>
> I'll echo a prior post.. "you may have to re-think your process".  
>
>   
I am changing the way this is done. I inherited this web server and I'm 
in the process of rebuilding the entire web infrastructure. So I welcome 
your suggestions.

re: Johnny C. Lam
Why would some department even need special URL rewrite rules?

There's a requirement to have all URL conform to http://www.company.com, 
so http://department.company.com/events/welcome.htm must be accessible 
by http://www.company.com/events and as Michael pointed out, to make 
really long URL shorter.

Does the webapp demand their use ?
No. This is all static contents, regular user renames a folder but still 
wants it accessible from the old url. This happens often enough to byte 
into my time, so I want to delegate it to the department whose 
responsible for web content. And since I'm in the process of a overhaul 
I would appreciate some best practice feedback.

The redirects are the most pestering of the problems, another is,  all 
users publish directly to the main web server. Most of them are using 
Adobe Contribute and the rest access it via ftp and ssh. I've gotten the 
support to change this, and put up a staging server and I'm killing ftp. 
I would like to know how nycbug members layout their web infrastructure, 
where do you place your proxy servers and what do you proxy ?