1. Advertising
    y u no do it?

    Advertising (learn more)

    Advertise virtually anything here, with CPM banner ads, CPM email ads and CPC contextual links. You can target relevant areas of the site and show ads based on geographical location of the user if you wish.

    Starts at just $1 per CPM or $0.10 per CPC.

how can I change default index page

Discussion in 'Site & Server Administration' started by Gazzerman, Feb 6, 2006.

  1. #1
    Hi all,

    On my homepage (http://www.yourcityoffice.com) I have a splash page which I want to remove, what I would like to do is make the http://www.yourcityoffice.com/home.php page the new index page but i dont want to change the url as I have many hard earned backlinks pointing to it, whats the best way to do this so the search engines pic this up as the default page instead of index.php?

    Thanks in advance
     
    Gazzerman, Feb 6, 2006 IP
  2. tflight

    tflight Peon

    Messages:
    617
    Likes Received:
    38
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #2
    You could perform a 301 redirect from your old page to the new page, however I don't think that is the best option here.

    The best option would be to ask your host to add 'home.php' to the list of "DirectoryIndex" files for your domain.

    You could also do this yourself via a .htaccess. You would add the following line to your .htaccess file if you already have one:

    DirectoryIndex home.php

    You can also include other default file names you commonly use:

    DirectoryIndex index.php home.php index.html

    (also keep in mind it is possible your host doesn't allow you to override that setting. But try it and see, if it doesn't work ask your host to do it for you on their end)
     
    tflight, Feb 6, 2006 IP
  3. tflight

    tflight Peon

    Messages:
    617
    Likes Received:
    38
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #3
    I just realized I might not have interpreted your question properly.... Which URL do you have all of the backlinks to? The one with or without home.php on the end?
     
    tflight, Feb 6, 2006 IP
  4. poslogistics

    poslogistics Guest

    Messages:
    36
    Likes Received:
    2
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #4
    One thing to point out is that the splash page has a PR of 3, whereas the new 'home page' has PR of 0. Can you not get your web developers to ditch the rename :) your new home page as the splash page...
     
    poslogistics, Feb 6, 2006 IP
  5. Gazzerman

    Gazzerman Active Member

    Messages:
    570
    Likes Received:
    16
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    60
    #5
    ok,

    I am the web developer and I also host the machine, so all is possible here :)

    all the links go to http://www.yourcityoffice.com/home.php and http://www.yourcityoffice.com/ not http://www.yourcityoffice.com/index.php

    The strange thing is that we get tons of google hits form the http://www.yourcityoffice.com/home.php which was a pr5 like every other page on the site except the homepage which is a 3, and its now a pr0 it fluctuates every few months from nothing to pr5 not like a normal pr update on the webservers though. strange!!

    Anyways so if I change the .htaccess google will treat the default page as http://www.yourcityoffice.com/home.php, is that correct?

    Sounds like I am being stupid asking this but I am messing with google and cant afford any mistakes, :)

    Thanks again.
     
    Gazzerman, Feb 6, 2006 IP
  6. Smyrl

    Smyrl Tomato Republic Staff

    Messages:
    13,740
    Likes Received:
    1,702
    Best Answers:
    78
    Trophy Points:
    510
    #6
    Could it be Google has that page indexed under two different URLs?

    The reason I ask is we threw up a page www.mydomain.com/page.htm and pointed a another domain name to the page. We needed page up the next day and had no guarantee we could arrange new hosting, and domain name propogation in time to sell tickets off new site 12 hours later. Radio and newspaper announcements were going out and site had to be up. Things rocked along until an artist linked to the page using wrong link. Google had us indexed under URL A and artist linked tot URL B. Pagerank on URL A fell to zero which was first signal something was wrong. When researching found pagerand for URL B was 5.

    Shannon
     
    Smyrl, Feb 6, 2006 IP
  7. Gazzerman

    Gazzerman Active Member

    Messages:
    570
    Likes Received:
    16
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    60
    #7
    Interesting idea, but its always been like this.

    I created the site from scratch, I registered and transfered the domain etc.. I host everything, when the site went up it is as you see it, very little has changed apart from new pages and new content. Most of our traffic is directed towards the /home.php page as its the one with all the useful content.

    Just did a "SEO Tools - Future PageRank" on www.seochat.com

    DataCenter 216.239.37.104 is now showing PR5 again, all were PR0 only just yesterday.

    Maybe this is also a sign of a PR update that is being predicted for around this time.

    Beats the s%!t out of me :)
     
    Gazzerman, Feb 6, 2006 IP