404 error for new site

[stuart1980]

I have deleted my old site.

The old url was http://www.bloomsburycleaning.co.uk/index.html

The new using Xaras way of doing it is www.bloomsburycleaning.co.uk/index.htm

This is causing me to get 404 errors when you click on links to my site from google maps, directory listings etc. Obviously this is really serious for me as I'm losing business now.

Can anyone help?

[johne53]

Ive often had this problem myself (with or without Xara). Your main page will be called index.htm - just make a copy of the same file, call it index.html and place it on your site.

[stuart1980]

Sorry to sound a bit thick, but how do I do this?

[johne53]

Oh, I assumed you'd have ftp access to your site. I normally publish my site from within Xara, then log on to the site using ftp, then I rename index.htm (calling it index.html), then I re-publish the site again. This creates two copies of the same file:- index.htm and index.html

Maybe there's an easier way to do it all from within Xara.

[Drwyd]

You might want to consider a 301 re-direct to preserve your search engine rankings. check with your web space provider on how to go about this.

Your google maps details will need to be updated, use your url without specifying a filename (www.bloomsburycleaning.co.uk) and it will pick up the default url from the server, in your case "index.htm" it is currently www.bloomsburycleaning.co.uk/index.html which has locked you into that file suffix.

Drwyd

[Drwyd]

Also some of your old files e.g. http://www.bloomsburycleaning.co.uk/...ny-london.html are still on the server and are listed on google. A quick fix would be to setup a page with a refresh meta tag to send visitors to the new version along the lines of "We have moved blah blah". You would have to do this for each of the old pages (until the 301 re-direct kicks in) ... I think I'm right on that last bit but not 100%

Drwyd

[stuart1980]

Johne - I am publishing the site from in Xara. I put

ftp://ftp1.storminternet.co.uk/

into my browser and can see the files that have been uploaded. I can see the index.htm file, but when I right click I don't have the option to rename it. Is this the correct way of doing it, and how do I rename it?

Drwyd - I really need to preserve my search engine rankings and one of the worse things about the new site is that it has less keywords on the front page and generally throughout than the last one. I think what you have outlined would be a solution, but I really don't have a clue how to do what you have said. I don't know how to set up a redirect.

[covoxer]

Have you tried to export it as index.html instead of index.htm?
[edit] DO you need both index.htm and index.html to be present?
In this case you may use an Autoload tweak for one of them to load another after some 1ms delay.

[covoxer]

Add a page to your document. Copy everything from the attached document to that page. Give that page an "index.html" filename.

[stuart1980]

So I create a blank page. Copy what you have done, and then in the web properties dialogue, call the filename index.html. (Won't this be published as index.html.htm when WD adds on the suffix?). Then reload the entire site back up using the upload button?