Show Users A Temporary Landing Page Prior To Loading URL?

[joyryde]

Hi -

We are an ecommerce website. We will be closing for a week this summer, and rather than our usual notice at the top of each page telling visitors that we are closed, we were hoping to be able to make a page that ALL USERS would see no matter where they entered our website (via a link on google, via direct access, or via links on other sites). We assume that there is a way to use HTACCESS to tell the browser to show them this page, and then allow them to click a link on that page to CONTINUE to the page they intended to land on? Is this possible? This way, we can guarantee that all visitors see this page telling them that we are closed but that they can still place orders, and then it will send them on to the URL they wanted.

[cYbErDaRk]

Hi joyride.

Never heard of that being made with htaccess. Though you can control weather the user is coming from "outside" via http_referer, browsers can be configured not to send you that info.

I think it'd be safer to make directly in yours shop code, detecting, for example, if the session is new or not. Redirecting, then, via Javascript would be a smart way, because you can get into trobule with search engines if not.

Regards

David

[joyryde]

Thanks for the reply, but we don't know how to do that...anyone else out there that may have ideas?

[jdMorgan]

All of the solutions are complicated, and none of them will work 100% of the time.

If this were my site, I would simply include a notice on the checkout page, or even on every shopping page (if you use a script or template to generate all pages). Otherwise, I'd be leaving the site thinking, "I do so hope my complex solution works properly while I'm on holiday..."

Simple is good. :)

Jim

[Terabytes]

I like JD's solution....

However, I do have a question about the "temp page" if that was utilized...

If their site gets indexed during this temp page period, would they temporarily make their ranking go south during this time?

I'm sure it would come back again eventually after the page was taken down, but could this be a problem trying to regain position afterwards?

just wondering...
Thanks!
Tera

[cYbErDaRk]

If you redirect the user's browser with Javascript, and also add a "Deny" on your robots.txt to that page, crawlers shouldn't ever reach it.

I'd do it this way:

1- Client comming
2- Detect if from "outside". I'd check if the session is new.
3- Render de full page, as if the landing page doesn't exists. But, if the session is new, redirect to the temp page, inmediatly, via Javascript, passing via GET the page to follow if the user's clicks on "Continue".
4- Because the session is not new, when the user clicks on "Continue", follow as usual.

Problems:

1- Some people don't use Javascript
2- Some people don't accept cookies, so if your site uses them to take care of sessions they'll have a problem :)

Regards

David

PS: On my online bookshop we simply put a notice on everypage when we go on holidays (not quite often) :)

[Philosopher]

You definitely wouldn't want to use a standard page as it would have an affect on future rankings if it were spidered (especially if ALL requests to any page were directed to it).

The only two real options are either to just put the notice on the checkout or shopping pages at JD recommended, or use some sort of javascript as that won't be picked up by the engines (most likely).

I still wouldn't use JS to actually redirect them as that could possibly cause problems as well (the engines do often look for JS redirects as possible spam attempts). Instead use JS to do some sort of layered popup or "lightbox".

If you do use JS, as others have mentioned, it won't work for all visitors as some won't have JS enabled.