Friendly URLs

Hello,
I am trying to find out if WD can publish websites with friendly URLs without file extensions like on Xara's website, ie: http://www.xara.com/us/

Thanks :D

Sure. If I read your question correctly you mean without the need to add index.htm to the URL?

If so then publish to your site as index.htm or index.html and the browser will automatically load the page.

I'm not sure if I said that correctly. My current site publishes a page like this: http://mydomain.com/products.htm
But I want it to publish it like this: http://mydomain.com/products

Yes you were right about my question. Sorry, at work trying to multi-task, and failing at it... lol

You need to be able to access and update your .htaccess file in your server root.

You need to include this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.htm [NC,L]

To add a trailing slash:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/$ $1.htm
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /$1/$2.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,5}|/)$
RewriteRule (.*)$ /$1/ [R=301,L]

You can change htm to html.

Acorn

Here is an example of the problem.
I have a WD file with 4 pages in it.
HOME (the index.htm) page
PRODUCTS
ABOUT
CONTACT

When I publish the WD file, it will produce 4 files and upload them into the root of the www server.
index.htm
products.htm
about.htm
contact.htm

When you go to the products page in a browser, it will call the URL with the file extension:
http://www.mysite/products.htm

However, instead I would like for it to read:
http://www.mysite/products

As far as I know, the only way that you can have it listed in the URL like that is to have each page in a separate sub-folder with an index.htm file. That would mean that instead of one WD file with multiple pages in it, you would have to have a separate WD file for each page. And structure the folders on the www server like this:

ROOT
index.htm
--PRODUCTS (folder)
index.htm
--ABOUT (folder)
index.htm
--CONTACT (folder)
index.htm

Please correct me if I'm wrong.
and I don't know much about .htaccess except to leave it alone.. lol

I'm looking into your htaccess file edit Acorn. Will that remove the .htm extension from the URL? if so, will I have to do anything different in my WD file? I read that you would have to make the link request without the extension. I don't know how WD would handle it, but I will continue to look into it and give it a try. Thanks.

derwalkerhaus - Just out of curiosity, why do you feel this is important or necessary?

And Acorn, what happens with your .htaccess file when a visitor bookmarks a page?

No problem.
One of my customers hired a different advertising/marketing company this year to handle all their advertising. This includes all media buying from radio, tv, and the internet. They made some suggestions to me to help improve the SEO for my client and I'm just trying to do my part. I'm not new to SEO. I do what I can to make sure all my websites get good ratings. I don't go all crazy with it though. All my customers are small local area businesses and what little SEO I do works just fine in my opinion. But considering he's paying them over 100k for all his advertising this year, I figure I'd do what I can.

One of the things that they recommended was to use "Friendly URLs". This one was a new one to me. So I did some digging and saw some of the same recommendations. So that's why I'm asking.

Personally, I think that my customers ranking is not going to be improved much more by making "Friendly URLs". He also uses WD to maintain the site and isn't as computer literate as I am... lol. Not saying I'm much more than he is... lol. But the thing is, if there's any possible way of screwing up the WD file, he'll do it.

That's about the gist of it. You guys are great at responding, and I appreciate all the help. It may take me a couple days to get the time to try out the .htaccess edit, but it looks promising.

Thanks :)

FYI, just found out that this is a Windows server... I don't think the .htaccess is going to work. I see that Windows uses a web.config file and I'm looking into that. :)

One of the things that they recommended was to use "Friendly URLs". This one was a new one to me.

Perhaps what they actually meant was SEO friendly URLs rather than user-friendly URLs?

http://www.techterms.com/definition/friendly_url

So maybe what you need is: http://www.somesite.com/quality-furn...low-prices.htm rather than htttp://www.somesite.com/furniture ?

I usually keep my URLs SEO friendly for the most part. But their advise was to "Remove the file extensions from the URL". I think "SEO Friendly URLs" like what you're saying work just as good as what they're asking for. Personally, I think that once you get to a certain point in dissecting the code that you're just being picky on their end. I'm sure they probably run his site through some website analysis software and just flags all the possible problems. But thanks for your input.

I think it's one of those cases where a "consultancy" company has to make recommendations to justify their fee and this is a simple recommendation that could involve a fair amount of hassle to do, be prone to error and is of questionable value, particularly with respect to the effort involved to do it in the first place and in ongoing maintenance.

One suggestion that *might* give you the result you're after:

1) Structure your website so that each section/page has its own folder.

2) Each section in each folder then has it's own index.htm file. e.g. www.yourwebsite.com/products/index.htm

3) You can then point to the products page simply by linking to www.yourwebsite.com/products

This works because browsers will automatically search for a file called index.htm / index.html if no explicit filename is given at the web path you specify.

It perhaps means you'd need to upload the website semi-manually, rather than relying on Xara's own in-built publishing tools though - so perhaps wise to weigh up the pros and cons by way of some experimentation before making the final judgement.

Good luck moving this project forwards.

Thank you.
I might have to resolve to that if I'm not able to adjust it on the server side.

From looking over several pages re this subject I'd suggest that it doesn't matter at all in SEO.

Here's the best answer I could find.

I totally agree. I have not found any official word from Google stating that this has any merit on their searches. The only thing that Google mentions in their "Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide" is that you may want to "Allow for the possibility of a part of the URL being removed" as a way to navigate to an area on your site. ie:

He or she might be visiting http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com...card-shows.htm, but then enter
http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2010/ into the browser's address bar, believing that this will show all news from 2010

I have the same problem. The IP is GoDaddy and on a Linux server. The code Acorn lists for .htacess file does not work.

I did what KultiVator suggests:

I made a new .web file with the one page, uploaded it to the site. Then I linked to the url and unchecked "correct automatically". It worked. However, it put a trailing /. Apparently the vendor doesn't want the trailing slash. Is there a way to fix that?

Also, couldn't I just publish my entire site into a folder and the .htm would disappear from all pages?

Thanks.