[wp-hackers] Canonical integration into core

[Alan J Castonguay]

Keep in mind that the question mark (?) in the path is not meaningful  
for HTTP. It could just as easily be a capital Z. The semantics are  
provided by the browser's handling of HTML forms and the HTTPD/CGI  
script parsing them. Each different url, regardless of ? or Z, is a  
different resource, and can be referenced and/or cached as a  
standalone entity. Using query parameters (?foo=bar or Zfoo=bar) for  
things like sorting or paging duplicates the same data on multiple  
pages, for two goals: To permit bookmarking/referencing a particular  
view/sort/subset, or to ask the server to generate a rendering of  
that particular view/sort/subset for a dumb client.

The former (eg, comment paging) can be addressed using Fragment  
identifiers (#comment-page-2) and javascript (to fetch/display/sort  
that result set).

If there is a need to preserve the latter use case, shouldn't the  
server only provide server-side paging for clients known to require/ 
request it, and instead yield a single large page (eg, of comments)  
for search engines and printers, along a javascript/css manipulation  
for the smart clients?

-Alan

On 17-Feb-09, at 1:09 PM, Joost de Valk wrote:

> On 17 feb 2009, at 19:04, Stephen Rider <wp-hackers at striderweb.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> On Feb 17, 2009, at 10:50 AM, Chris Jean wrote:
>>
>>> So, this is different than keywords, descriptions, title, etc in  
>>> that this field[...] can't be used to game the system.
>>
>>
>> That's the type of presumptive attitude that spammers just love.
>>
>> Putting it another way, I bet there are a number of savvy spammers  
>> who would beg to differ with you on that statement.
>>
>> Personally, I think the comment paging problem is a completely  
>> separete issue and should be treated as such.  Something like  
>> example.com/blog/2009/02/post-title/?comment-page=2 works just  
>> fine and doesn't (to my knowledge) hurt SEO or search engines.
>>
> It does, so your knowledge needs updating :-)
>
> Best,
> Joost
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