broken links

[calmncomfy]

I had managed to get some top ten natural rankings on various important MSN searches but then done a major overhaul of my site. Some page names were changed and the MSN searches still point to the old, non-existent names, with the new page names nowhere to be seen despite the new pages having the same content as thew old page in some cases.

Is there any way to stop MSN pointing at the old pages, and point to the new instead?

Otherwise I will have to re-name some of the changed pages back to the old name & they are not really appropriate.


thanks

[wjcampbe]

You need to redirect the traffic to the replacement page. Are you on a *nix server or a windows server?

On *nix, use ftp to connect to your server and look for a file called .htaccess - thats a period first. Download that file to your desktop and rename it by removing the leading period and adding a .txt extension. Now you can open it in notepad.

Add one line for each renamed page, like this

redirect permanent /myoldpagename.html /myreplacementpage/html

when you have them all, save the file, rename it to .htaccess and ftp it back up to your website, overwriting the one that is there.

Check your website logs for any incoming link that directs people to one of your renamed pages, and contact the webmaster for that link and ask them to change it to the new page name. After the next spider run, your should see the new page names added in the search engines.

Check the pages cached by search engines for the old page name, and once you see the new page details cached under the old page name it is safe to go back and remove the redirects - but it will do no harm to just leave them there.

[calmncomfy]

Thanks for that.
I'm using windows XP on my office computer to make changes, but hosting the site on a Linux server, not sure if that is *nix or not. can you advise.
Will I need to get new separate FTP client software to do this, or can I use Actinic for the FTP part?
If I can use Actinic for this, could I trouble anyone for instructions?

[jont]

Yes it will work on the Linux server as Bill has pointed out. You can use Actinic to upload by adding the .htaccess file in with "additional files" but this will lump it into the acatalog folder so be careful with your paths to the missing files... may be better for redirects to place the .htaccess file in the root of the web server using a standalone FTP tool. If you don't already have one go to www.download.com where there are lots of freeware versions - I use LeechFTP (very basic) and CoffeeCup which is a little more user friendly.

[calmncomfy]

Thanks
I have downloaded both coffee cup & Leech, but when I look for .htaccess I cannot find it. I've looked through the files in folders named htdocs, logfiles & private to no avail. the only other files (in the root) seem to be .bash_logout, .bash_profile & .bashrc.

Any clues?

[jont]

.htaccess is usually not there a standard but you need to create it yourself. Use Notepad (only notepad not word or word pad) and create the information you want.

Save the file as temp.txt - then using explorer find and rename the file to .htaccess (note the period) and hit save. If you need to edit in future simply open with Notepad and you can then just hit save. Upload to the root of the server with your FTP program

[pinbrook]

Also to be able to see a .htaccess file you will have to turn on viewing invisible files. Using WS_FTP you can do this with the command -ls.

[calmncomfy]

Thanks Jont
I have got the new file. could you just check this attachment looks OK and whether anything looks wrong.
Cheers

[jont]

you just need to put

redirect permanent /acatalog/Magnetic_Braclets.html /acatalog/Magnetic-Bracelets.html

OR... simply go to that page in Actinic and rename from the underscore back to the dash and reload

[calmncomfy]

Cheers.
That's a good point about renaming from actinic, but the new page is already ranking on some things but not on others.

[calmncomfy]

When I try to rename the file to ".htaccess" in MS explorer, a dialog box pops up "You must type a file name". I'd appreciate it if anyone knows how to get around this one.

[jont]

If it won't allow you to change open the file back in Notepad and do a "save as" and type .htaccess there

[calmncomfy]

Cheers, done it now & am waiting for the spiders to do their work.
does anyone know how long this might be likely to take?

[calmncomfy]

Should this redirect anything that requests the old page on the server? If so it does not seem to be working when I go into the site. The old page is still returned
In the .htaccess file I have written:

redirect permanent /acatalog/Magnetic_Braclets.html /acatalog/Magnetic-Bracelets.html

I copied the names straight from the web page so they contain no errors.
I placed the file in the first server folder that also contains all the other folders in addition to files .bash_logout, .bash_profile & .bashrc.

can anyone help?

[jont]

You need to place the file in the www folder ... ie the one above the acatalog folder