I’ve been talking to my friend Greg from Web-Fu Design in Portland about finding ways to parse Commission Junction datafeeds and insert them into a mysql database. Basically, my goal is to create a complete product catalog from these feeds yet create a search engine friendly, spiderable catalog.

I think using mysql, php, and mod_rewrite is the key, as I’ve seen how successful that tactic has been on Portland Bars.

The difference is, I’m not sure how I’ll be able to create understandable urls. I am going to be creating this for a website to buy wine from. So instead of having a page called product123456.html to deliver information about a nice 1994 Pinot Noir wine, I would have a page in a products sub directory with the actual product name as part of the url. For instance, the way I am trying to write this is as follows: products/1994-pinot-noir.html

I just think that psychologically surfers are more prone to respond to a page whose URI indicates that it has information they are looking for. After all, what does URI stand for? Do I hear Uniform Resource Indicator, keyword being INDICATOR.

In the grand scheme, I think this is a very small factor, but I think it has enough value to merit a little extra work.