Interview Page

"Optimizing FuseBox Applications for Search Engines" interview with Jon Rowny

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Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Jon Rowny about his Fusebox and Frameworks-05 talk "Optimizing FuseBox Applications for Search Engines". So why should a developer come to your session Jon?

Jon Rowny: Hopefully, what I teach will not just help you optimize a Fusebox site but any architecture as well. If you run any extranet that you want more exposure for (especially an ecommerce site) then this session is for you! In the session I will be showing how to clean up the URLs so that search engine spiders are more prone to crawling through a verity of different techniques from a simple CFScript to server modification (IIS or Apache). In addition I will be sharing techniques for managing massive request loads by search engines, a review of how to dynamically generate Robots.txt via CF, and we'll see if I have time to discuss some of the more basic techniques which can be implemented easily via CF as well.

MS: So why would I want to optimize for search engines? What is the benefit to me?

JR: The main benefit of optimizing for search engines is to gain exposure for your website. Most people find information on the internet via a search engine like Google or Yahoo. By optimizing your architecture you can make your website more attractive to these search engines and make it easier for them to index your website's content. Many clients of the popular Adwords program pay thousands of dollars per month to achieve a number one spot on Google for a single keyword or keyword-phrase; through optimization you can achieve similar results for many keywords without having to pay Google a dime.

MS: So what is the issue with a Fusebox site not being optimal? Is the URL string?

NR: The beauty of TheHUB is its simplicity. There is no configuration file to maintain. As your application grows and extends, as you add directories and templates and add new functionality and process to the application, the framework just continues to look for that key/value pair that I mentioned by parsing the query string. If none exists, it simply loads the default template.

MS: Sort of automated circuits and fuseactions, is that the idea?

JR: Any architecture that passes url parameters to view content pages is at risk of not being indexed by major search engines. Fusebox happens to use URL parameters for every single request and sometimes these strings can get rather long. Some people say that Google will not crawl a page with more than three query parameters, others claim that it won't crawl pages with &id= because it fears running into session IDs, but regardless of your belief in crawler behavior there are many easy ways to fix it. Fusebox is a great candidate for optimization because it requires very little modification to achieve SES.

MS: Does TheHUB add any other framework features such as layouts or security?

NR: I've not put any additional overhead into the TheHUB. The core files include a sample layout which really is just a header-footer wrapper around the file included through the URL request. This would be the opposite of some framework with hundreds of core files that you will never use and don't know what they're for, but your application pays for the overhead of those files anyway.

MS: You mean there is a way to fix this without changing every page in the site?!

JR: Yes, there are several different methods to solve the problem from modifying server settings to a simple cfscript. Once you've learned to write URL handling scripts you can modify it to work with any architecture with ease. Of course there are implications with different servers and versions of ColdFusion but after attending my session you should be able to optimize any site on any architecture on any server.

MS: Cool - will you show any code in your session?

JR: Yes, I will show all the code needed to execute SES urls.

MS: That is great - I am looking forward to your session.