Building a Domino website: friendly URLs

Oops... To my big surprise I saw this article popping up in my Google Reader this morning, while in fact I was only just started on it. I was working on it, but must have touched the 'Published' radio button before I saved.

The last step towards friendly URLs is asking the Notes administrator to make a Server redirection rule, in my case to redirect all /hobby/ to the address of my database. These are my rules at present:

Benefits of friendly urls

• Because the database path is replaced with the redirection, the database can be moved without any change to the web path: you just change the redirection rule accordingly.
• You also get the shortest possible, human readable and search engine friendly URLs.
• You can use the path, view alias and document key even to transmit very strong marketing messages. How about:
  http://blog.lotusnotes.be/domino/rocks-as-hell

Technical description

Every Notes database must have one: a shared field or field in a shared subform computing the web path of the database. We use to do it like this:

"/"+@ReplaceSubstring(@LowerCase(@Subset(@DbName; -1)); "\\":" "; "/":"+")+"/"

Until this came available:

"/"+@WebDbName+"/"

But now, after the redirection, my DbPath field is just this:

"/hobby/"

All formulas that have to calculate the path of the database use this field. However, a lot of references are kept in computed fields in order to use them in view columns. So I have to recalculate these fields for all documents with my favorite agent, the one I have used more than any other ever: 'Refresh Selected':

@Command([ToolsRefreshSelectedDocs])

If you ever get your hands on one of my databases, look for this agent and run it on all documents. It might release you from all (computer-related) problems.

Conclusion

I am very surprised that I still find so many websites on Domino having these ugly Notes URLs. Anyway, my hobbysite now has friendly ones: Fantasite - http://www.tangosite.com/hobby/