Forum Moderators: bakedjake
It makes me look really stupid when someone views the Google cache. I'm sure it looks really dumb in some browsers, too. After all, the extension is .txt. I don't know what the MIME type is, but judging from the Greek my server gives me, it thinks they're text files.
So what do I do about it? If I wanted html, I'd write it myself, dammit.
On the flip side of this, in html files my server helpfully turns my < and > back into < and >, which means that I can't use < in my body text unless I vigorously "fix" it every time I make an edit, and it turns & into &. On some pages I may have to use umlauted vowels (e.g. ä for ä) and I'm worried it will "fix" these too. I've had some real trouble with this before using certain server software. In time my umlauts simply disappeared . . .
If the "Content-Type:" is not "text/plain" but "text/html" you can be sure it's apache.
I have a new problem, though . . . I seem to have blocked myself from cPanel using mod_rewrite. D'oh!
I don't have the same control panel options that you do, apparently. However, my online file manager lets me choose text/plain or text/html. I think I'll fiddle with some new files and see what happens and report back.
I seem to have blocked myself from cPanel using mod_rewrite
Then check it again. If you messed it enough to keep you out, you probably made more mischief. Try moving it out of the way just to test for a minute.
Google is doing this parsing themselves on text files. It's probably because they want to suck out the URLs and feed them into their system. Another reason may be that they have to stick their blurb on top in the form of a table, and they cannot do this without converting the whole thing to html.
No, I don't like it. Normally I have the NOARCHIVE set for Googlebot on the rest of the site, but for these special text files I cannot do that since there's no place for a header in a text file. So the cache copy comes out looking rather dumb, with Google's markup plainly visible on it.
Yet another tiny transgression on copyright by good ol' Google.
Obviously I was in need of some coffee, or a clue. I just took a look at my headers using the WW plugin, and they come back text/html. Ouch!
Kackle,
You might be right about Google's part in all this . . . Some of my text files have the <html> and <pre> tags, while others don't, but ALL of them are text/html according to Apache. Interesting, no?
It would be really nice, actually, if google could follow properly formed urls in text files. I put urls in them for the saavy user to find other pages on my site, but having Google follow them would be great! This business of displaying html tags for text files, though, makes me look like an idiot and I don't care for it at all.
A quick search for ".txt" on Google shows that the <pre> tags are showing up on lots of text files (in the Google cache, that is).
