.htaccess Tools: Questions regarding htaccess => 404 (Not found) error

404 (Not found) error - using the .htacess on Zeus servers [message #905]

Sat, 22 March 2008 10:45

lister
Messages: 1
Registered: March 2008
Location: London

hello everyone,

I have been working on a website for a friend and uploaded the site to the server. I submitted the URL to google and an error came back regarding the index page"

http://www.coloursense.net/index.html 404 (Not found) Help Mar 10, 2008

I asked for some help on Google webmaster forums and received an answer saying I should look into redirecting the http://www.coloursense.net/index.html to the root of the server so google doesn't thing its x2 pages with the same content. here is the reply I got from that forum:

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Why index.html should also give a 404 is the problem. It exists, it returns a 200. Maybe it was a one-time error, something wrong with the server on that day.

Even though index.html exists OK, it shouldn't be used in navigation and should be 301 redirected to the root, to take care of anybody trying it or old bookmarks or old cached urls. Matter of cleaning up navigation and keeping only one url for each page of content.

Yes, the actual default page may well be called index.html and its content will be shown when you request the domain root url. But it is also shown when you request domain root url AND index.html - thus you have 2 urls that show the same content. Robots don't know it's the same physical file - they don't care. it's 2 different urls showing the same exact content, thus duplication.

I am referring to redirecting so that the URL will be just that of the domain root url. This goes together with ensuring you don't use index.html in navigation but always just the domain root url.

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So i contacted namesco who host the server (Server: Zeus/4.3) about using a .htacess file to redirect the index to the root. But they didn't really help, except for saying create a .htaccess file and upload th to the server.

Now, I'm really not sure what information to use in the htaccess file to get this to work on these servers?..

could anyone help..????

Thanks

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