Auto-generate pages

Legacy Dynamo
1

Hi all,

Specifically with SEO in mind, is there any way that I can get Freeway to automatically generate dozens of pages, with each page based on a template containing some generic text, and then the information below being a slight variation on the previous page. For example, for a pair of shoes I would have pages as follows:

Page 1: Generic Text + Item Name

Page 2: Generic Text + Item Name + Brand name

Page 3: Generic Text + Item Name + Brand name + Item Description

Page 4: Generic Text + Item Name + Brand name + Item Description + Location

Then, for a dress, a coat, a skirt etc etc, the same as above for each of those different items.

Thanks,

Jonathan

dynamo mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

2

Long ago, before the war, there was DataDesigner, which could have
done this for you pretty simply. Then Filemaker upgraded from FMP 5 to
6 (oh, he says, that war…) and broke it forever.

There is nothing built in to Freeway or available in an Action that
could do this in one step the way DD could have done.

You could experiment with Paul Dunning’s PHP/MySQL Actions, create a
MySQL database with your product information in it, and try building
the templates for these pages in Freeway. What you describe is not all
that complex for a server to generate.

You wouldn’t need these pages to actually exist, either, if you use
one of the many fine URL-masking techniques available nowadays on
Apache + PHP servers. The way most of these work is that they treat
the URL as a set of keys in a particular order, and any “fake” URL
(which is to say, any request for a file that doesn’t really exist) is
filled by one script which parses the URL, decides what content you’re
looking for, and then fills that request.

The big example of this that I usually show off is The Good Service
Guide, which has hundreds of “pages” that don’t exist, except in the
mind of the server. They are all completely indistinguishable from
real static HTML pages, even down to the filename extension.

Walter

On Jul 22, 2009, at 8:51 AM, Jonathan Riddle wrote:

Hi all,

Specifically with SEO in mind, is there any way that I can get
Freeway to automatically generate dozens of pages, with each page
based on a template containing some generic text, and then the
information below being a slight variation on the previous page. For
example, for a pair of shoes I would have pages as follows:

Page 1: Generic Text + Item Name

Page 2: Generic Text + Item Name + Brand name

Page 3: Generic Text + Item Name + Brand name + Item Description

Page 4: Generic Text + Item Name + Brand name + Item Description +
Location

Then, for a dress, a coat, a skirt etc etc, the same as above for
each of those different items.

Thanks,

Jonathan

dynamo mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

dynamo mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

3

Long ago, before the war, there was DataDesigner, which could have
done this for you pretty simply. Then Filemaker upgraded from FMP 5 to
6 (oh, he says, that war…) and broke it forever.

Is it weird I paused to go make some smores before Uncle Waltd told us a story about the war? :slight_smile:

dynamo mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

4

Thanks as always, Walter. I will take a look at Paul’s action, but I do fear that yet again I am wanting to do something that is beyond me.

dynamo mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

5

Actually, having spent a bit of time looking at this, and because of spending the last few months using php/mySQL based osCommerce, it isn’t as scary as it sounded.

Thanks, Walter.

dynamo mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options