remove index.html from homepage URL

[guyc]

When the user is logged out I want the homepage URL generated by the following variable:

<actinic:variable name="HomePageURL" />

to point to:

www.mysite.co.uk/

not:

www.mysite.co.uk/index.html

The main reason is for SEO benefits as it helps ensure people linking to the domain all link to the same place. It also ensures this is consistent with the internal link structure.

Previously I had changed the:

Design Options | Home Page Link

and pointed it to: www.mysite.co.uk/

However I found this had serious repercussions when trying to log into the site from the homepage as the site tried to redirect back to /acatalog/www.mysite.co.uk/ which caused the script to fail.

Furthermore navigating back to the homepage from a section page when logged in, the URL was www.mysite.co.uk not the CGI-BIN URL which actinic required to show that the user is logged in.

So I'm hoping for a solution to change the appearance of the homepage URL, however it only needs to do it when the user is logged out.

help as always is much appreciated....

[Mike Hughes]

I'm not sure you can do what you want. The main difficulty is the different requirements when logged in. Someone else might know of a way.

Personally, I'd approach it from the other side. Redirect all calls to the home domain to your index.html page. It just seems much easier to me.

Mike

[guyc]

Hey Mike,

To future proof the site we find it best to remove extensions and any page name from the root of the site. This way if we ever move away from Actinic we have no redirect issues on a php or other such platform.

We can 301 the index.html page to the root / and the canonical tag means we can ensure google knows what we want to be our homepage URL. I was just hoping I could edit the perl files to hard code the logged out url to a /

[Mike Hughes]

Sure. I understand what you're asking for.

I was just hoping I could edit the perl files to hard code the logged out url to a /

The issue with this approach is going to be that the perl scripts aren't involved when the user is logged out. Only when they're logged in.

As far as I know, when a user is logged in the scripts parse the html files to maintain the logged-in status and display the relevant info. In order to do this for the home page, they need to be able to call the home page file which is why I suspect you have to name the homepage. If it's not given a name then the scripts won't be able to find it.

IIRC the scripts aren't clever enough to maintain the logged in status with hard coded links which is a shame as that would make your life much easier.

Mike

[guyc]

Is there a variable that tells me if i'm logged in or out?

I was looking at this:

<Actinic:ONLYINB2B>
<div class="logo"><a href="<actinic:variable name="HomePageURL" />">Our Store Homepage</a></div>
</Actinic:ONLYINB2B>

<Actinic:NOTINB2B>
<div class="logo"><a href="/">Our Store Homepage</a></div>
</Actinic:NOTINB2B>

but they both appear when I'm logged out.

So as I can currently only tell when I'm logged in then I can wrap the logged in URL (HomePageURL) within something like the following:

<Actinic:NOTINB2B>
<div class="hide">
</Actinic:NOTINB2B>
			
<div class="logo"><a href="<actinic:variable name="HomePageURL" />">Our Store Homepage</a></div>
				
<Actinic:NOTINB2B>
</div>
</Actinic:NOTINB2B>

This way both logos are on the page however if your not logged in then the class of 'hide' can be used to hide the HomePageURL logo. Then when you enter a logged in state the hide divs are removed and the HomePageURL logo can be absolutely positioned over the top of the default root / logo....

[leehack]

If index.html needed to become index.php because you changed packages in the future, wouldn't a 30 second 301 redirect be the sensible thing to do, surely this time could be better spent on improving the site? How do 10 thousand other actinic sites deal with this crippling issue? simple answer, it's not crippling, makes no difference.

You seem more worried about your home page name than the hundreds of product pages that would also change name I presume, what about them? Perhaps i am missing the point here somewhat.....

[Mike Hughes]

No, I don't think you're missing anything Lee.

It seems like a lot of effort for little reward, if any.

If it's the site I'm thinking of then they'd be better spending time on sorting out things like pagenames with copy_of_... and links into the catalog that aren't using any anchor text.

Mike

[guyc]

Hey Guys,

Seem to of got rather off point now. I have established a means of removing the index.html within internal links to our homepage and thats really all i needed to look at.

[graphicz]

I've just had this very issue. Jenny in support modded searchscript.pl and that fixed it!

[guyc]

Sounds promising, don't suppose you know exactly what the modifications were?

[graphicz]

I've compared the files and the only difference I can see is an extra space in the client file after the } on line 112. However the client is delighted because the issue is fixed!

Best call support and ask for JB. My reference if it helps them was 299900