Humiliating questions about index.html

[taupe6]

God this is so embarassing...

I just got a new account, not very experienced with html,
and I thought if I put an index.html file in my main directory:
/big/dom/x[domainname] and pointed my browser to
www.domainname.com, I'd see what was defined in my
index.html. Um, that ain't happening.

Could someone please tell me how to get rid of the default
web content that FQ set up, and replace it with my index.html
masterpiece ("hello world")?

Thanks.

Myra

[sheila]

Hello Myra,

Welcome to FutureQuest.

You need to put your index.html file in the directory

/big/dom/x[domain]/www

That should do it.

Any files and/or images that you would like to be accessible via the web need to be in the www/ folder or a subdirectory of the www/ folder.

The default FutureQuest file is index.fquest and is located in the /big/dom/x[domain]/www folder. You can delete it if you like, but that isn't necessary. If you simply place your index.html file in the same directory, it will override the index.fquest file.

Hope this helps,

Sheila

[taupe6]

...That's all, just thank you Sheila.
Exactly the info I needed.

Myra

[Kara]

Myra,

There is no reason to be embarassed. Hosting your site here is a lot different then say geocities (where I had a site before here). I've had to ask the same question myself.

The main directory is known as the root directory. You'll hear that term quite a bit.

Welcome to FutureQuest and I hope to keep seeing you on the forums.

Kara

[taupe6]

There is no reason to be embarassed. Hosting your site here is a lot different then say geocities (where I had a site before here). I've had to ask the same question myself.

Thanks Kara.
Good to know you had to ask that very thing.

I don't know about geocities, but I briefly had a site
quite a while ago at Cedant, and it seemed a tad more
intuitive there.

I guess I'm a little perplexed as to why FQ would put
the default web content in an index.fquest file, when
a lot of people would look for an index.html file, which is
sort of the standard. The answer is probably that index.whatever
is a standard too, but it just seems like it's confusion that'd be
easy to prevent if they used only index.html.

And appreciate the tip about the root directory.
Esp since it tends to mean something else in the context of UNIX.

See you 'round.

Myra

[sheila]

Hello Myra,

Actually, that question gets asked fairly regularly. ;)

I really should have provided this link last night, but was just a bit tired, and didn't think of it:
http://www.aota.net/HTML/homepage.php4

The above link leads to a tutorial that explains in more detail all of the options for the default display page in a directory. You have many options in addition to the index.html option, and the servers are configured to give priority to pages depending upon how they are named. It is even possible for the individual site owner to add to the list of default index pages, or to change the options or priority listing, by using the .htaccess files.

Hope this sheds a bit more light on the situation,

[TVB]

Sheila,

what's the difference between htm and html? If a search engine is listing is has *.htm listed, is is it possible to make a mirror home page using html and not end up with a 404 occuring. i.e. google has me as htm because for some reason unbeknownest to me, I used htm. But someone told me for reasons I now forget that it is better to have it as html. If I make an identical page with html, will clicks off google on the htm version just go to that one whereas a direct entry of the site name will go to the html version?

Betsy

[PaulKroll]

.htm is what happened when Windows tried dealing with the web. Before Windows 95 (and yes, there was an Internet and a web before Windows 95), Windows could only deal with FAT style 8.3 names, so it couldn't do an extension of ".html'".

If you always want index.htm to be the same as index.html, make a soft link in the directory: i.e., do:

ln -s index.html index.htm

And then you never have to worry about updating index.htm. :)

Oh, and yes: index.html is, IIRC, "ahead of" index.htm in the list o'pages to call up as indices, so if you wanted to have a "old google link" page, you could do so... but why not just delete the page and let google reindex your site w/out a "legacy" page?

[TVB]

ln -s index.html index.htm

Where would I put that? Would it go into the htm page? I'm not sure I understand. As I mentioned it was kind of a dumb question. But so was the light bulb that went off when I was told htm was a bad thing to do...Even worse was it my sister who promptly admonished me for not asking her first!

Betsy

[sheila]

ln -s index.html index.htm
The above command would be typed in a telnet session at the command line. It is a command to create a symbolic link, or "symlink" to the file index.htm. Then, even though the file index.htm doesn't really exist, the server will know that that file points to index.html. And when someone requests the index.htm file, it will serve up the index.html file under the former file name.

[PaulKroll]

it was kind of a dumb question
While I do believe there are dumb questions ("Can you just hear the sustain?" "No" "Well... you would if it were playing"), that wasn't one of them. None of us are born with this knowledge. Except maybe Terra, but we're not even sure he was born on this planet... :cool:

Sorry for the incomplete, geekish instruction. Thanks Sheila for clarifying.

[skolnick]

Originally posted by TVB:
If a search engine is listing is has *.htm listed, is is it possible to make a mirror home page using html and not end up with a 404 occuring.

In my x[domain]/www/ directory I have a .htaccess file (note initial period). When I changed my index page from index.html to index.shtml I added this line to .htaccess:
Redirect 301 /index.html http://www.skolnick.org/index.shtml
When anyone (including Google) asks for index.html, they get a message back redirecting them automatically to index.shtml and telling them that the change is permanent. This approach doesn't require any additional maintenance from me, ensures that people following old links get the new page, and tells intelligent search engines (like Google) to update their links to my site (the soft link suggested elsewhere won't lead to that last, desirable result).

[TVB]

Very kewl. I think I'll just do the redirect using .htaccess. Last night I spent all whole bunch of time reading about telnet since I know I should know how to do that but I do like tht path of least learning curve.:P

Thanks everyone,

Betsy

[kitchin]

If you use FTP, make sure to upload .htaccess as ASCII text, not binary. Sometimes it is easier to call it htaccess.txt and then use FTP to rename it .htaccess.
:QTbeam: