GoDaddy offer Apache?

[robbyd4182]

So I've installed my SMF and love it.  I'm trying to enable "search engine friendly URL" but when I click on the question mark next to that option, it tells me that my server does not support it.  I called up Go Daddy and they said I do have Apache installed.    

Does anybody know what I have to do to resolve this?  May be change hosting company?  If I do have to change hosting companies, do you recommend any particular company that will support mod_rewrite?

All the help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks.

[metallica48423]

edit: I was wrong with my last post, give me a few and i'll find the correct info

[青山 素子]

I'm guessing GoDaddy has PHP configured to run as a CGI, but they don't have cgi.fixpathinfo enabled in PHP.

The built-in "friendly" URLs require either PHP running as a module, or having that option turned on in PHP if not.

[metallica48423]

Either PHP needs to run as an Apache module, or you need cgi.fix_pathinfo to be enabled (if they are running PHP as a CGI).

edit: thanks motoko-chan

[robbyd4182]

Thanks for the info guys.  I appreciate it.  I'm new to this so excuse my stupidity, but how do I enable cgi.fix_pathinfo? 

I called godaddy and found out that they are running cgi as php and that I have to upgrade my hosting to get cgi.... So I'll be doing that.

[青山 素子]

I called godaddy and found out that they are running cgi as php and that I have to upgrade my hosting to get cgi.... So I'll be doing that.

Don't let them upsell you. They are just trying to confuse you, you don't need full CGI access.

The only way to enable that variable in PHP is if you have the ability to control php.ini settings (some hosts allow this), or your host must be willing to update that setting. GoDaddy probably won't be willing to change that setting on their end, so hopefully the first option will apply.

As a note, "friendly" URLs really don't help any rankings, so you really don't need to run it on if that is the only reason you have for it.

[robbyd4182]

Well, that has something to do with it.  I checked with Google and apparently they don't like to crawl anything that has a ? in it. 

Once I get cgi, can someone walk me through on how to run the script to enable cgi.fix_pathinfo

Any help would be appreciated. 

[青山 素子]

Well, that has something to do with it.  I checked with Google and apparently they don't like to crawl anything that has a ? in it. 

Where did you get that information? Google crawls URLs with query strings just fine. In fact, they even lifted the restriction on not indexing pages with id as a parameter.

[robbyd4182]

Hi,

Thanks for the prompt reply.  I realy do appreciate it.   

I found the information at:

hxxp:www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34431&query=php&topic=&type= [nonactive]

[青山 素子]

If you read that page carefully, you'll see it actually says the opposite of what you thought:

Yes, Google indexes dynamically generated webpages, including .asp pages, .php pages, and pages with question marks in their URLs.

(Emphasis mine)

Generally, you want to avoid too many parameters (five is generally considered the upper limit, although less is better), and different parameters that lead to the same page (this is why the noindex additions to the index template in SMF 1.1 final). SMF is fine in these regards.