Changing homepage extension

[Dunx]

In following another thread about setting up the default homepage on the servers here, I noticed the page that Bob posted about priority of extensions for the index.* page:

http://www.aota.net/HTML/homepage.php3

Now, I've had an index.html page in place since I first started here at FutureQuest, and I'm looking to change across to an index.shtml page (for reasons to tedious to go into here). Clearly, if I create this index.shtml page in the root directory then visitors to dunx.org will see the new page.

But - what's the best way of redirecting those who go direct to the index.html page rather than relying on the default handling? Clearly, I don't want to just remove that page because then people will get the 404 page instead.

[PaulKroll]

Given that you already KNOW these are folks who are going direct to www.yourdomain.com/index.html instead of www.yourdomain.com, I'd put a notice up saying "please update your bookmarks to www.yourdomain.com, as the 'index.html' page has been moved"

Or you can creatively cheat with either apache Redirects or by making a 404.php script that tests for the specific case and redirects. :)

[Bob]

Hmmm I thought I heard my name ;)

What many, including myself, have done is create a custom 404.shtml that mirrors your main page's navigation. Then when someone does reach a .html file that no longer exists they get the custom page that includes all of your main navigation.

By making the 404 a .shtml file any changes you do to your main page's footer, header and navigation (if included in shtml call) automatically will update the 404 page as well.

Make sense? :confused:

Hope this helps,
Bob