Revisited: Build Dynamic Pages With Search Engines in Mind Page 2

Removing the ‘?’ and ‘&’ from the URL string is a necessary first step, and it’s
sufficient for many tasks. However, you can take it further by having context-sensitve
meta tags generated on the fly for every page.

When I build a site, I create a common library that is include on every page
throughout the site. You can call this file shared.inc or whatever.

Shared.inc sets up the database for me, and, more importantly, contains a function call
for the header and footer of the site.

<?php

//sample shared.inc file

//set up database connections

//any global variables for background 

//    colors or path names

function site_header($title) {

    //contains common HTML

    //for the header

}

function site_footer() {

    //contains common html 

    //for the footer

}

?>





You would then call site_header() and pass in the page title for each page. That’s exactly how
PHPBuilder works.

If you have an architecture like this, all of a sudden you can do some really slick
things in site_header(). Not only can I create the standard HTML header/title/body tags,
but I can create meta tags using the $title string.