skipping the home (brochure) page

[jxm28788]

after redesigning my site I have decided that my main product (catolog) page is quite sexy, and makes my home page look a bit lame by comparison.

I would like to ditch my current home page (the brochure page) in favour of my products page.

Currently the home (brochure) page is [website]/index.html and the product (catalog) page is [website]/acatalog/index.html

What is the best way to go about changing this?

Bear in mind that I have already submitted the URL www.lowcarbgoodies.co.uk/index.html to several search engines, so visitors will be arriving at that address.

I guess if I changed the index.html at the root to auto redirect people to the /acatalog/index.html page the search engines won't like it (that's frowned upon) so that's not a good idea.

And if I manually copy the /acatalog/index.html page to /index.html then all the internal links will be out and it will get overwritten each time actinic updates the website...?

[elfinp]

put a redirect on using an htaccess file. Mine looks like this:

Redirect /index.html http://www.princessstores.co.uk/acatalog/index.html

Theres a space after the first index.html

This sends all browsers looking for www.yoursite.com/index.html to www.yoursite.com/acatalog/index.html
It should also send anyone typing in simply www.yoursite.com to the relevant page as well.

To do this, put similar to the redirect line above into a text file and save it as htaccess.txt. FTP it manually to your root directory (the directory before acatalog) on your web server. Rename it to .htaccess (note the . ) once its on your web server using the ftp software's rename command. It will disappear from view but its still there. This will ONLY work if you're on Linux/Unix - no idea how to do it with an NT server


If it doesn't work (and I gather the exact format has been known to vary) then don't panic, you haven't lost access to your site! Do the same but with a blank text file which will reallow access to your site and go a-hunting (search on 'redirect using htaccess') for alternative formats. Should work though.

[jxm28788]

what about search engines? their submission guidelines say don't submit pages that redirect to other pages.

Their reasoning is that they don't want dummy sites (eg affiliates) pointing off to other sites, but I don't want to be delisted because their software thinks I trying to do something like that...

[garyhay]

the .htaccess file is not considered a redirect.

AFAIK It is a system level file that tells the server where the root of the site is.

You should submit http://www.yoursite.com/acatalog to the search engines if this is the base page.

You should also remove the brouchure pages from the Actinic Program and set the homepage link to your actalog/index.html

[jxm28788]

set the homepage link to your actalog/index.html

where do I do that?

You should also remove the brouchure pages from the Actinic Program

Should I actually delete the section marked 'home' in actinic, or just the page fragments...?

Also, I have an 'about us' page off the home page (it is under 'more pages' in actinic). I assume I can keep 'more pages', but how do I get the 'about us' button in with all the navigation buttons?

[rmladden]

Your really want the acatalog folder to be your root folder. Talk to your ISP. This has become a sore point with me. The Actinic software is telling me that it is smarter than me and I must conform to a certain structure. I edited the setup2 table to bypass the problem because my ISP is not available to make the change.

I have made changes to Actinic.PM and several templates, but Actinic won't trust me to set up my server the way I want?

Bob Ladden

[harlequin]

must admit

i would like to decide where to upload my store to...

it is a known FACT that for every level you descend into a website, google drops a whole point on its pagerank system!!

it would be far better to put all the pages in the root folder of a website *if* we so desired, it would sort out one heck of a lot of pathway issues (is it a front page, is it a brochure page, is it going to the root, is it going to acatalog, oopps the hardcoding im doing is going all pear shaped..sound familliar?) as well, and not to mention the poor guys who dont want a 'front page' and end up with search engine unfriendly redirects...

time for change methinks...

ps..

bob, do your changes work and allow us to upload where we want to?

pps. if anyone ever wants to know exactly what server they are on go to www.netcraft.com and just type in your url....

[rmladden]

I found the method here at http://community.actinic.com/showthr...&threadid=2582

It worked well, but you have to be very careful when you edit in Access (as usual). And you can never touch your network settings in Actinic without having to go back into Access again.

I think the reason Actinic does this is to ensure that the folder permissions are set correctly. This is something I found but was able to fix in seconds.

Actinic should just issue a warning to those that want to do this.

Bob Ladden

[harlequin]

does this upload all files into your root folder then? is it true?

steve

[rmladden]

Yes, it did (expect the stuff that still goes in cgi-bin).

I guess someone can write a little application that lets you set it without using Access (Jan: hint).

Bob Ladden

[jxm28788]

so if you edit the database to make everything go in the root, and (I assume) you call your catlogue page index.html, what do you do about the following -

1) How do you get rid of the 'home' button from the top of the root catalogue page (which now *is* the home page)

2) Do you need to make any changes so the the 'home' button on all the other pages now point to the catalog root page?

3) Do you delete the 'home' section from teh actinic tree?

Once this is done, I'll be ready to upload my newly designed site!

Thanks,

John.

[rmladden]

I deleted all brochure pages. I changed my top section icon to Home and the images to home1.gif and home2.gif (see Navigation). Base page is index.html and clicked None for Home Page Link in the design (Misc.).

Bob Ladden

[Jan]

> (Jan: hint)
:-) ... I'm sitting here trying to make my reports work nicely for the USA with one hand while fixing the printer selection in Quick Orders with the other ;-) Only joking, I'll have a look at it when I get a spare few minutes. You could save me some time and reiterate what the changes are that are required in access to fix up the network settings.

Regards,

[harlequin]

if you are using ssl

hi guys, for your info, i use ssl on my sites and it seems acatalog is mentioned in setup3 on the actinic database as well....i would imagine those have to be removed as well..

havent tried this yet, will do tonight though..

thanks.

steve q

[jxm28788]

ah, I'm using ssl as well. I better check that.

I have made the other changes though, but I had an 'about us' button under 'other pages' but I had to delete it when deleting the home page.

How do I get an about page now, and how do I get the 'about us' button into the navigation bar?