Forum Moderators: mack
It's too many clicks to get to real content and I want to make the main page the index, but the site is in all the SE's, doing well, and I don't know how to do this properly. A redirect from the index to main might cause problems right? How do I clean this up?
Any advice would be very much appreciated. I've been wanting to take care of this for months but I'm afraid of messing it up with the SE's, directory links, and the two dmoz listings.
A 301-Moved Permanently server redirect will replace the current URL with the specified URL in both a browser and the search engine index.
You could also simply delete index, and declare that main is your index file. How you do this depends on your srver. Also, this may not work if you refer to your home page as "http://www.mydomain.com/index.html" instead of referring to it as "http://mydomain.com/". If that is the case, then use the redirect.
Ref: [w3.org...]
HTH,
Jim
"You could also simply delete index, and declare that main is your index file" Would that bring links to www.widgets.org and www.widgets.org/main both into the main page?
Thanks again. If I'd known what I was doing at the start I wouldn't have this problem.
Added: I mean to say, if I just delete the index will everything come into www.widgets.org/main.htm depending on the hosting company I use?
If you are hosted on Apache, take a look at the mod_dir documentation [httpd.apache.org]. This should answer your last question, and explain why index and main both work.
If you're hosted on IIS, maybe someone else can help you - I am not an IIS user.
HTH,
Jim
Now, typing in www.site.org takes one to the main page. My concern is that when the SE's next crawl, such as Google, they will get a 404 on the index page. Will this cause problems as far as anyone can see?
Added: Just realized the bookmarks to www.site.org are giving 404's in all my browsers... bummer.
Added: Changed it all back... wish I hadn't arranged things this way at the very beginning.
According to my Google toolbar, your main.htm, where your links to the rest of your site are, has a PR6 and your index.htm has a PR5. So if your thinking about Google's spider then it seems fine the way it is.
If you're thinking about humans getting around your site, I have a couple of suggestions. Instead of calling the link to main.htm "... Main Page", call it "Contents" so people know they can find the contents there. And you can keep your index.htm an introduction but instead of "News and Resources" link you can go ahead and have that link be called "... Contents" too.
I wouldn't delete a page that has any links coming to it. I would use it for something.
To keep a good PR on "main.htm" ask those linking to "index.htm" to change link to "main.htm."
I think it is fine having index of site telling about site and then linking to "Table of Contents".
Yes, my concern has been humans navigating the site, i.e. too many clicks to get to content from www.site.org but although most incoming links are to site.org a couple are to site.org/main.
I think the suggestion about making main into "contents" is good and you're right about not deleting a page that has any links to it.
At the start, I had no idea about website development and approached it as though it were a book, with the index as the cover, and the main as the contents page. I think you're right that I should work with what I have rather than make big changes that might confuse SE's, directories, (amongst others, 2 dmoz cats now, the second not even asked for), and linking sites, (people seem to be stumbling across the site and linking to it without me even knowing until I see a hit via the link in the logs). I'm going to approach this cautiously.
Thanks for the good suggestions, it's much appreciated.
Stefan
