Frames site with *.htm resolve only

[beaglechick]

Hi :)

I am trying to clean up one of the fugliest sites I've seen in a while. It's in frames. I don't understand the file structure underneath... shortcut folders that I can't even tell where they go. Trying to put in new folders results in bad server responses. It's probably some server side setup that I don't understand but I've never seen it done this way and it seems overly complicated for such a simple site

Next it's all in frames

then nothing resolves to *.html. just *.htm --> that is where it got real weird because I am thinking the folder shortcut thing is doing that but there isn't any way for me to access just what it's doing.

the site actually resolves to xyz.com/home.htm instead of just xyz.com/ or index.htm

so... is there any way to fix the problem of the page not resolving to what it needs to on my side?

Or do I need someone with server access to change some settings?

[edited by: lammert at 2:11 pm (utc) on Oct 12, 2010]
[edit reason] Member request [/edit]

[beaglechick]

Ahh... I have a solution. Through years of people attempting to manage the site there were folders compounded upon folders. It seriously needs major cleaning up. That lead to a lot of hilarity.

It's fixed now. The massive file weirdness lead to two folders with conflicts... one didn't display the home.htm file. It wasn't obvious in the maze just which folder was the public html folder anymore.

For anyone else seeking advice on this, throw away or rename the home.htm file and the server should default to index.html or htm, whichever you choose. If you are switching to .html please remember that depending on the sort of site and type of usage, the pages may exist in bookmarks out there. At the very least send out an email to the known contacts advising them to update their bookmarks, etc.

In the end, I think I might get some subcontracting from this conversation with the host service... coolio.

[lammert]

It is not only existing bookmarks which matter during the transition from .htm to .html files. Search engines and other sites may have stored links to the old names and you may loose traffic by changing from one URL extension to the other.

Adding server side 301 redirect codes from the old .htm URLs to the new versions may both free you from the work to email people to update their bookmarks, and help to preserve existing rankings in search engines and traffic from sites linking in to the site. Setting up a proper 301 redirect code differs from the webserver type you are on, i.e. Apache, IIS or Nginx.