Domain Name Only in Address Bar

[marcofranco]

I want to hide the full url extension to my web site pages in the address bar of a browser. eg don't want: http://www.example.com/index.htm etc, but do want: http//www.example.com/ no matter which page looking at.
Any ideas? I'm not a web developer and just have Dreamweaver. Maybe it's a job for my web hosting company to sort out (they sent me here!).
cheers
Marco

[edited by: tedster at 8:36 pm (utc) on Mar. 3, 2005]
[edit reason] use example.com - other domains may work! [/edit]

[Alternative Future]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com] marcofranco,

If you want to avoid scripting then your best idea might be to use frames, you could have an invisible frame 1px at the top and your main content pages below that. There are a lot of do and don’ts to using frames these days would this be an issue with you?

-george

[marcofranco]

Don't want to use frames.
Just thought that my web hosting company might be able to hide the paths. If not then there's not much I can do about it.
Marco

[Alternative Future]

I think mod_rewrite Unix etc or ISAPI-Rewrite for windows server would be able to do what you are after.

Try aiming your question here [webmasterworld.com...] I am sure Jim Morgan would have a better idea.

Sorry I couldn’t help you any further if there are any other ways of completing this I am sure some of the other members will post here soon.

-George

[BlobFisk]

One thing to watch out for here is that if you are hiding the full address (using mod_rewrite for example) then your users will not be able to bookmark individual pages.

This could lead to a lot of user disatisfaction and lower your return visits.... Sticky URLs are the way to go!

[buckworks]

Think long and hard before you do something that would interfere with the ability of users to bookmark individual pages. You might do more harm than good.

One way to get "tidier" URLs fairly easily is to plan for it in your site's directory structure, and watch the style of your internal linking. Example: set up your gadgets info page as yoursite.com/gadgets/ and link to it that way, not as yoursite.com/gadgets/index.html.

Always link to your home page as yoursite.com/, not yoursite.com/index.html or whatever, and encourage link partners to do the same. Try to keep your link popularity focused on one version of your URLs rather than letting it get split between variants.