HTM loading as HTML and vice versa

works on some but not all Apache servers

[smallcompany]

I always thought, regardless of the fact I saved all pages with HTML extension, that they would load just fine if I enter a page as with HTM extension.

And this is true with some, but not all hosting companies.

My .htaccess files are quite similar on all of those servers, so I would assume it would not be "my" configuration causing this.

Would server handler matter (CGI vs. Apache)... or something else?

Thanks

[g1smd]

Serving the same file via multiple URLs is not to be recommended.

Each URL should bring up different content. Non-valid URLs should return a 404 status.

Having said that, you can set up a 301 redirect so that if the wrong name is requested, the user is redirected to the correct version of the URL.

I use that to redirect "/(index¦home¦default)\.(html?¦php[45]?¦[ja]spx?¦cfm)" to just "/" for all requests.

I link to "/" as that is the "correct" URL. If you request one of the other versions then you are redirected and still get to see the content.

[jdMorgan]

There are various reasons why a server might return .html files in response to requests for .htm URLs. Among them are mod_rewrite (RewriteRule directive), mod_alias (Alias directives), mod_negotiation (MultiViews option), mod_speling, and the AcceptPathInfo directive (on Apache 2.x).

So, the likely cause is a difference in your server configurations.

As g1smd recommends, any given 'page' or object on your site should be directly-accessible at one and only one URL; Any and all variations of domain, subdomain, FQDN (a period following the domain, as in "example.com."), port number (e.g. "example.com:80"), URL-path, path fragment (also called "named anchor") and query-string should be 301-redirected to the canonical URL. This includes "index.html" versus "/", and upper- and lower-case variations of the URL-path and the parameter order in the query-string as well.

To be clear, a URL is composed as <sub-subdomain(s)>.<subdomain>.<domain>.<top-level domain><period indicating FQDN><port-number>/<URL-path>#<fragment>?<query-string>. The sub-sub-domains, subdomain, FQDN, port number, URL-path, fragment identifier, and query string are all optional in different cases.

Jim

[smallcompany]

So, in other simple words, the right way is to serve 404 if HTM version is requested as all pages are actually HTML (like in my case)?

[jdMorgan]

You could do a 404 (or 410), but if there are any links to .htm URLs, then you would want to use a 301-redirect as I stated above, to recover both the traffic and the PageRank/link-popularity.

Jim

[smallcompany]

Thanks.

All of my pages within any site are HTML, period. It is just that from time to time, I would see a request for a single HTM page on some, no referrer.

Now, with this better understanding that a request for a non-existing HTM should return 404, I wonder if one of my (shared) hosting packages that returns HTML on HTM request is actually a problem?

Thanks