7 replies to this topic

[lister]

Hi, not sure where I read this but I am sure I read it on these forums, that it is advised AGAINST making your homepage .index for SEO reasons...

The reason for this, (I think) is because SE regards mysite.com/index as a different file to mysite.com which has a homepage....?

Am I right or confused on this....

If you dont name your homepage index.html which I have been doing for years w/out issues, what do people here use to name it?

Thanks

[chrishirst]

You have misunderstood, it means do not link to the index page BY NAME.

eg: use site.tld/folder/ instead of site.tld/folder/index.htm

[lister]

You have misunderstood, it means do not link to the index page BY NAME.

eg: use site.tld/folder/ instead of site.tld/folder/index.htm

Thanks - really appreciate your advice

Let me pls ask you something else - my site architecture has always been this - you will notice that the index lives OUTSIDE the folders....I thought this best since servers and browser requests can clearly find index.html as the homepage....

<folder: images>
<folder: css>
<folder: javascript>
<folder: pages subject a>
<folder: pages subject b>
index.html

Should I create a folder to accommodate the homepage? Is that better practice? Thanks

Update: I created a folder called www and placed the index.html in there....

As suggested I pointed to the index.html by doing <a href="../www/">Home</a> and I am shown the directory listing - so it just lists all the pages in there....

Do I need to upload the site to get this effect? Thanks

Edited by lister, 31 May 2011 - 03:14 AM.

[Jill]

Should I create a folder to accommodate the homepage? Is that better practice

No you should absolutely not do that.

[chrishirst]

The webserver has a list of "index" files that it looks throught in order to determine the content to deliver for a HTTP request that ends with a backslash ('/') or a name with no extension.

The standard list for Apache is index.htm, index.html, index.shtml plus index.php IF PHP is installed. For IIS (Windows) the list is; index.htm. default.htm, index.asp, default.asp, index.aspx and default.aspx.

When the server finds one of these files, it delivers the content and script data to the various handlers.


So for requested RUI or domain.tld/ it already "knows" to deliver domain.tld/index.html

[lister]

thanks for your helpful reply and advice - so basically the reason why it wasn;t working locally is b/c my machine is not an apache server hence doesn't do that automated find index.html ?

thans

Edited by Jill, 01 June 2011 - 07:56 AM.

[Catz]

There is no reason you should not name your home page index.html, you are doing the right thing there.

You need to have your home page in the root directory rather than in a folder.

If you do not have a page like index.html (or others that were mentioned) loaded in the root folder, then when someone searches for your site as www.sitename.com, it won't find anything, thus it shows the directory you mentioned.

Put an index.html page the root directory and the site will show up fine.

The difference is in how you write links to the home page.

A good example is when you code your navigation links.

For the home page, you link to either index.html or www.sitename.com.

What is being advised against is writing your links as www.sitename.com/index.html, which would be seen as different from www.sitename.com.

Even though both links will take you to the same page, the different links make it appear to be different pages.

[lister]

ok thanks for that -