SERA integration on Apache Web Server¶

Kindly follow the below examples to setup the routing of bot traffic to SERA.

Prerequisites¶

All your page requests must get intercepted by below SERA routing rule
- Please check your routing, caching and cache-variation policies for that
If caching is enabled, Users and Bots should have a separate cache-variations configured. This is to not serve the SERA's bot-optimized-content to users.

Steps¶

Change SERA_ENDPOINT to the SERA endpoint shared with you
Change YOUR_TOKEN to the SERA token shared with you
Change YOUR_DOMAINS_SECRET_TOKEN to the SERA token shared with you
Change example.com (server_name) to your actual domain
Change /path/to/your/root to the correct value
Keep the relevant bot user-agent regex condition mentioned below - to control the traffic being sent to SERA

LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so
LoadModule authz_core_module modules/mod_authz_core.so
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so
LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so

<VirtualHost *:8080>
    ServerName example.com
    DocumentRoot /path/to/your/root/

    <Directory "/path/to/your/root/">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    #added for sera
    RewriteEngine On
    SSLProxyEngine On

    #added for sera
    <IfModule mod_headers.c>
        RequestHeader set x-nv-sera-token "YOUR_TOKEN"
        RequestHeader set x-nv-access-key "YOUR_DOMAINS_SECRET_TOKEN"
    </IfModule>

    #added for sera
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
        <IfModule mod_proxy_http.c>
            #USE THIS RewriteCond - DURING POC PHASE for bot User-Agent check :
            RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (n7TestUserAgent|google\\ page\\ speed|chrome-lighthouse|google-inspectiontool|PTST|GTmetrix) [NC,OR]
            #USE THIS RewriteCond - ON GOING LIVE ON SERA for bot User-Agent check :
            #RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (googlebot|n7TestUserAgent|google\\ page\\ speed|chrome-lighthouse|google-inspectiontool|PTST|GTmetrix) [NC,OR]
            RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _escaped_fragment_

            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^GET$
            RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-NV-APP} ^$
            RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-NV-SERA-BYPASS} ^$
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .+(|\.html|\.aspx|\.php)($|\?.*) [NC]
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*(/static/|/_next/|/api/|/login|/logout|/account/|/wishlist/|/cart/|/checkout/|/payment/).* [NC]
            RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING) !(^|&)nsbp=[^&]+ [NC]

            #USE THIS IF YOUR SITEMAP PAGE URLS DO NOT HAVE QUERYSTRING
            RewriteRule (.*) SERA_ENDPOINT? [P,END]
            #USE THIS IF YOUR SITEMAP PAGE URLS HAVE QUERYSTRING
            RewriteRule (.*) SERA_ENDPOINT [P,END]
        </IfModule>
    </IfModule>
</VirtualHost>

You can test the Apache configuration on Fiddle
Whitelist SERA requests at your origin to avoid any issues with indexing. Details are here
Keep refining the logic by adjusting user-agent list, and SERA exclusion-patterns as needed.
Test thoroughly:
- WPT and GTMetrix will automatically receive the response from SERA due to the routing rule set above.
  - Steps to validate page using WPT
- To check the SERA rendered page on browser, you can use DevTools > Network conditions facility, or some browser extension (like Simple modify headers) to manipulate the browser user-agent.
  If in testing phase, use these user-agent values:
  For desktop:
```
n7TestUserAgent
```
  For mobile:
```
n7TestUserAgent; Android
```
  If SERA is live, you can use these actual bot user-agent values:
  For desktop:
```
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +<http://www.google.com/bot.html)> Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36
```
  For mobile:
```
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +<http://www.google.com/bot.html)>
```
On go-live day, set the user-agent condition regex to actual bot user-agent values. Additionally, ensure that your condition is case-insensitive.
After go-live, in any dashboards created for monitoring the "actual user traffic" e.g. Google analytics, exclude the requests with user-agent string containing word "Nitrogen SERA" to get correct understanding about user-traffic.

SERA integration on Apache Web Server¶

Prerequisites¶

Steps¶

Testing and Refinement¶