What is the verdict on dealing with the googlebot?

[Rainguy]

Everyday, between 50 and 250 logins/spiders, all showing those session ID's. What is the best thing to do? It kinda bogs down the site sometimes.

[medisave]

Hello,

 

Ive just been playing with trying to make oscommerce get rid of session ids and i think I have found something (I know nothing about PHP mind you!)

 

I have changed the following in html_output:

Code:

 

// Add the session ID when moving from HTTP and HTTPS servers or when SID is defined

if ( (ENABLE_SSL == true ) && ($connection == 'SSL') && ($add_session_id == true) ) {

$sid = tep_session_name() . '=' . tep_session_id();

} elseif ( ($add_session_id == true) && (tep_not_null(SID)) ) {

$sid = SID;

}

 

if (isset($sid)) {

$link .= $separator . $sid;

}

 

 

 

to:

Code:

 

// Add the session ID when moving from HTTP and HTTPS servers or when SID is defined

if ( (ENABLE_SSL == true ) && ($connection == 'SSL') && ($add_session_id == true) ) {

$sid = tep_session_name() . '=' . tep_session_id();

} elseif ( ($add_session_id == true) && (tep_not_null(SID)) ) {

$sid = NULL;

}

 

if (isset($sid)) {

$link .= $separator . $sid;

}

 

 

 

Now even with cookies off NO session IDs are generated - last night with web position gold spider got trapped in my site because of the session ids - still going after 3 hours! I made this changed and it returned my site urls in about 2 mins and exited the site!!

 

NOW I do realise that anyone now browsing my site without cookies will not be able to buy anything!! - but I think personally this is a good trade off. However someone might be able to write some elseif statements so that the $sid = NULL; only gets set when a bot is looking at the site (by IP or header??) - or maybe some kind of message to the end user telling them about cookies etc?????

 

HOWEVER my changes do seem to work BUT as i said i know nothing about PHP so am i missing anything serious problems with my site by changing this code???? I have checked my site with and without cookies and everything seems to function correctly! - any comments welcome!

 

My site is at:

http://www.self-test-kits.co.uk

 

and currently has the change made! The only problem i can see is that the "other" languages apart from the default english and the other currency pages will not get properly indexed???

 

Cheers,

 

Graham Wright