Classic ASP URL Rewriting

Question

Hi there, I was wondering if it is possible to do URL Rewriting with Classic ASP when you do not have access to IIS to make any rewrite changes?

We have an online shop where products are typically linked as /product.asp?ContentID=X but would like to have something more SEO friendly such as /product/unique-product-name

Unfortunately we are on a shared hosting platform and are current hosting provider is not willing to install additional components to their server in case they cause issues for others. :(

Answer 1

Probably not.

You should, at least, alter IIS configuration for 404 pages, so you code could take control.

Answer 2

I've done this. It's kludgy but workable.

As another commenter mentioned you can have a custom 404 page. You'll need at least a little cooperation from your hosting provider to alter IIS to send 404 errors to a custom page in your directory. They shouldn't have a problem with that; won't affect other users.

As far as I can tell, on your custom 404 ASP page, about all you really have access to is the original URL via Request.ServerVariables("QUERY_STRING")

You can then parse the contents of that out and redirect to whatever is needed with Server.Transfer (not Response.Redirect, because you want a seamless server-side redirect and not a client-side redirect)

Make sure you have a fall-though case to handle actual 404 errors too!