AOL Sux and Other Thoughts
This WebDNA talk-list message is from 2000
It keeps the original formatting.
numero = 34933
interpreted = N
texte = We have been getting some complaints that people coming from AOL cannot see our sites at all. This may be related to the difference in how 3.x and 4.x presents HTTP headers to the AOL proxy server; I have read all of the text at http://webmaster.info.aol.com and followed their recom- mendations. I was completely unable to get AOL 5.0 to properly view any page on my site which did not contain URL parameters.When we designed the site, we took care to make the URL's look as simple and clean as possible, until you were deep in the site (and I no longer had a choice). I know that I could simply add ?cart=[cart] to each link, but I think it is more impressive that everything seems to work without effort.Then I had an epiphany; AOL's caching servers will not cache any page that contains the question mark (?) or the strings .asp or cgi in the path or filename portion. And I can set the default document to be Index.* (under WebSite). So, I quickly mapped .asp to WebCat and created a page called Index.asp with the following text: [if [browsername]^AOL] [then][Redirect Index.shtml?AOL=lame][/then] [else][Redirect Index.shtml][/else] [/if]Now, when someone browses to my sites (e.g. http://www.univpress.com), the above page redirects them to the first page if it detects the string AOL in the [browsername] variable. Otherwise they go to the second page. In fact, you can put any text of the form ?VAR=VAL and AOL's caching servers will not cache your page!I think that there will always be a need to have the initial root document be an fake ASP page, so that you get initialize the browser to the correct page. I plan on creating a short file that can be included on any other page which will check to see if there are no URL variables and an AOL browser name, and then redirect to itself with some default URL variable. I'm considering something less inflamatory, but at this time, I'm still pissed that AOL feels they are big enough to ignore the rules (sound like anyone else we know???).John Peacock------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list
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We have been getting some complaints that people coming from AOL cannot see our sites at all. This may be related to the difference in how 3.x and 4.x presents HTTP headers to the AOL proxy server; I have read all of the text at http://webmaster.info.aol.com and followed their recom- mendations. I was completely unable to get AOL 5.0 to properly view any page on my site which did not contain URL parameters.When we designed the site, we took care to make the URL's look as simple and clean as possible, until you were deep in the site (and I no longer had a choice). I know that I could simply add ?cart=[cart] to each link, but I think it is more impressive that everything seems to work without effort.Then I had an epiphany; AOL's caching servers will not cache any page that contains the question mark (?) or the strings .asp or cgi in the path or filename portion. And I can set the default document to be Index.* (under WebSite). So, I quickly mapped .asp to WebCat and created a page called Index.asp with the following text: [if [browsername]^AOL] [then][Redirect Index.shtml?AOL=lame][/then] [else][Redirect Index.shtml][/else] [/if]Now, when someone browses to my sites (e.g. http://www.univpress.com), the above page redirects them to the first page if it detects the string AOL in the [browsername] variable. Otherwise they go to the second page. In fact, you can put any text of the form ?VAR=VAL and AOL's caching servers will not cache your page!I think that there will always be a need to have the initial root document be an fake ASP page, so that you get initialize the browser to the correct page. I plan on creating a short file that can be included on any other page which will check to see if there are no URL variables and an AOL browser name, and then redirect to itself with some default URL variable. I'm considering something less inflamatory, but at this time, I'm still pissed that AOL feels they are big enough to ignore the rules (sound like anyone else we know???).John Peacock------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list . To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://search.smithmicro.com/
John Peacock
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