[PJUG Javamail] Consumer Based Web Development

[James Perkins]

Great comments Ken thanks!

Yes, the POST is going to be the biggest challenge. Having to think it terms
of how a search engine indexes is really hurting my brain :-). I'm so used
to just developing an application that has no need to care. We will have
some kind of category type drill down which probably would require JSF links
so that is my main concern.

I'm not really to keen on creating static pages myself. It was the only
other thought I had at this point. I'm still researching some so we'll see
what happens.

We can move to a Java EE 5 compliant server, but our client isn't on one
currently. The company I work for is an IBM business partner so we use
WebSphere Application Server. I know WAS 7.0 is Java EE 5 compliant, but my
boss didn't want to have to install it if we could get it running on WAS 6.1
since we already have a B2B app working on it.

Again thanks for your expertise here.

--
James R. Perkins
http://twitter.com/the_jamezp


On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 10:55, Ken Paulsen <Ken.Paulsen at sun.com> wrote:

>
>
> James Perkins wrote:
>
> I'm getting ready to start the process of creating a consumer based web
> site. This is really the first time I've had to create a consumer based
> site. My original thought was I would JSF/Facelets to create the site, but
> got to thinking this might not work out so well as I need search engines to
> be able to index it.
>
> Depends on how you do your navigation.  If you use POSTS for all your
> navigation (JSF makes this easy), then yes -- you'll likely have problems
> getting Google to index your site.  However, JSF can behave like many other
> frameworks which don't provide "navigation handler" type features, and you
> can simply do:
>
>     <a href="nextpage.jsf">Next Page</a>
>
> This will index fine with Google.  Used this way it's no different (nor is
> it any more helpful) than many of the other UI frameworks.
>
> The difficult areas would be if you were expecting a generated table of
> links / buttons AND you want them indexed by google... then you'd want JSF
> to generate them and then you're back to the POST or URLs which contain view
> state which google won't handle well.  You'd have to do extra work to make
> reproducible GET links in your table...
>
>  I've created web applications before, but they have always been internal
> applications or applications that required a user to log in and have an
> account.
>
> Doing some reading on SEO I'm seeing now that an entire JSF based site
> might not be the best approach. The main problem being you can't really
> bookmark JSF pages and links are mostly created using JavaScript which the
> spiders can't crawl.
>
> I think the POST is mostly the issue.  Although some implementations of
> links/buttons do use JS that may also cause problems.  It's very easy to get
> around the JS-based components.
>
> My question is have others run into this? Are people really still creating
> static pages for stuff like this? Do any of you have suggestions on where to
> begin or possibly a framework that would work better than or with JSF? I've
> heard of PrettyFaces, but I think you have to be on a Java EE 5 compliant
> server which to start we will not be running.
>
> There is also RESTFaces and I think Seam has something and a couple
> others.  I'm not sure which is best, or if any are worth using (I haven't
> had this requirement either).  However, in the next version of JSF2 there
> will most likely be a standardized approach for REST URLs which should
> address most if not all of these issues.
>
> I've also considered creating a library to generate static pages based on
> templates. That way each time a new item or category is entered into the
> database a new page is not having to manually created and/or updated.
>
> Yes that could be done too... although it would probably be just as easy to
> design your site to only use GET URLs and create custom components and/or
> use PrettyFaces (if it helps) for ensuring all URLs are generated the way
> you want them.  Generating pages gives you the overhead of manipulating
> files in your web tier and keeping it in-sync with your DB when content is
> removed or updated -- could be a pain.
>
> People's other suggestions might be worth exploring too... but there are a
> lot of benefits of JSF (this area is obviously not one of them).  Also, you
> said you would not be using a Java EE 5 server... does this mean JSF 2 is
> out of the question?  I strongly recommend JSF 2 over previous versions of
> JSF.  Is this b/c of size?  Performance?  Hardware is incompatible?  Unless
> your hardware isn't able to run the software, I would look seriously at Java
> EE 6 -- it's just better.  (If you hardware can't run modern software --
> then you have bigger issues ;-) .)
>
> Anyway, good luck whatever you decide!
>
> Ken
>
>
> Thanks in advance,
> --
> James R. Perkins
> http://twitter.com/the_jamezp
>
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