URGENT! Can Someone Please Help Me?

Need help to remove a redirect in .htaccess

[granna]

Please forgive me if I'm not clear here. I know absolutely nothing about databases but own a website. It is on two servers because yahoo where I built the site can't support my forum. Anyway, we have horrible support and they were as usual refusing to even acknowledge much less help us so an asst. admin's husband worked on and resolved the problem.

In the process he redirected the url from the server where the board and galleries to the main board on the other host so that when you clicked our site name .net you got the main site home page which is our site name com.

Anyway that was almost 5 months ago and I didn't even know he did it. He and his wife are long gone and now none of my galleries or my forum can update or galleries be backed up and we are having constant database problems and slowness and malfunctions on the forum because their .net url isn't directed to the .net servers.

This is what support told me after it took them almost 5 months of ignoring me or telling me nothing was wrong when it was. They finally found it after we are having critical database and server issues because of it. They refuse to fix it and won't answer my emails or anything.

All they told me is to go to .htaccess and by adding entries in my .htaccess it should remove the redirect. They didn't tell me what to enter or anything. I have been up for 36 hours now trying to find out how to fix this. I did find instructions to redirect the redirect and tried that and it did remove it but then you couldn't access any of the boards at all.

We do not have a website or home page or anything index.html or index.php on this site it merely hosts our boards. Can someone please tell me what to do and give me the appropriate way to enter it (code or whatever).

I have 6 months of back breaking work in this site and over 8,000 photos and I just can't bear to lose it and it is falling apart in increments since yesterday. Please know that as far as databases I know absolutely nothing but I'm a quick study and can follow directions if they are written in layman's terms.

Sorry this is so long this is such a nightmare. And thank you to any of you who can help.

Theresa

[edited by: txbakers at 2:36 am (utc) on April 3, 2006]
[edit reason] clarify [/edit]

[willybfriendly]

Two thoughts:

1. This thread might get more attention in Apache forum

2. Hard to give advice as to what to do without a look at the actual htaccess code. Perhaps you can post that, exemplifying the URL of course.

WBF

[granna]

Thank you for bringing that up WBF, that's just it. When I went there where they told me there was no url, no redirect there, but it is definitely redirected. I mean obviously I know nothing about databases, etc., but I know what a link is and I know the URL has to be there and it wasn't. I thought maybe it was just my ignorance on the subject but it just wasn't logical.

Theresa

[jdMorgan]

Theresa,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

In most cases, you'd be looking for example.net/.htaccess as the path to the file we need to see. However, this URL is unlikely to be accessible via HTTP (because it could cause serious security problems to allow it to be HTTP-accessible), so you'll have to get the file using FTP or your site's "Control Panel." Without looking at that code, there's little that we (or you) can do about this problem.

Jim

[zomega42]

A small extra tip: depending on what ftp program you use, you might need an extra step. My ftp program won't show me ".htaccess" by default, because it's a hidden file. I have to click a menu option "show dot files" or "show hidden files" or something along those lines.

[willybfriendly]

Yes. In WS-FTP there is a little box in the upper right area. Type -la in that box. That is for "list all". Took me far too long to figure out that little trick.

WBF

[granna]

Below is what is in the file. I replaced my ip address with the explanation in parenthesis. The url that redirect that is in there now I had to put in yesterday because they told me that I needed to make entries (they didn't tell me what entries and still won't answer that question) so after reading all the things I could find I thought I could try redirecting it back to .net. When I did, it did remove the redirect but then I couldn't access any of my galleries or anything because it told me the page no longer existed. So I went back and entered this redirect to hook it back up to .com so that members could access everything. But originally there was no url in this to indicate a redirect.

DirectoryIndex index.php

order allow,deny
allow from all

deny from (this is my ip address)

#Redirect /example.net http://www.example.com/new.html

[edited by: jdMorgan at 5:39 pm (utc) on April 3, 2006]
[edit reason] Removed specifics per TOS. [/edit]

[jdMorgan]

Theresa,

You're going to need to look up these directives, and understand what they do -- There's no way we can give you a 'quick fix' here without having full access to both of your servers, and that might be a rather serious security problem for you...

This code doesn't make sense for what you describe, and it also sounds like you may be looking at the wrong server. Instead of trying to 'redirect it back' --which if you think about it, would just lead to an infinite redirection loop-- you need to remove the original redirect, or to make it conditional, so that your DB apps can work.

# Define the file to be served for "example.net/" requests
DirectoryIndex index.php
#
# The following code should block your IP address' [url=http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_access.html]access[/url] to your own site... Not recommended!
order allow,deny
allow from all
deny from (this is my ip address)
#
# This [url=http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_alias.html]redirect[/url] line does nothing because the leading "#" makes it a comment line, and because
# the syntax for the 'from' URL-path is incorrect.
#Redirect /example.net http://www.example.com/new.html

If you're not comfortable digging into the Apache documentation [httpd.apache.org] and modifying the code in the server configuration files, I strongly suggest that you hire someone (preferably someone local that you can work side-by-side with) to resolve this problem before the 'buzz' on your site's topic dies down.

You might also want to look into the usability and SEO-related forums and threads [webmasterworld.com] on this site, in order to get your site listed higher in the search results and improve click-throughs while the revenue opportunity is compelling. Of paricular concern is the pull-down navigation system and lack of text on your home page. (That said, please note that we do not do site reviews here at WebmasterWorld, and that posting your own URL in threads is against the Terms of Service.)

Jim