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Thread: Friendly URLs

  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Franklinville, North Carolina, USA
    Posts
    32

    WD6 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

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Placitas, New Mexico, USA
    Posts
    41,486

    Default Re: Friendly URLs

    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.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Franklinville, North Carolina, USA
    Posts
    32

    Default Re: Friendly URLs

    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

  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Franklinville, North Carolina, USA
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    Default Re: Friendly URLs

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

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,744

    Default Re: Friendly URLs

    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
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Franklinville, North Carolina, USA
    Posts
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    Default Re: Friendly URLs

    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

  7. #7
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Franklinville, North Carolina, USA
    Posts
    32

    Default Re: Friendly URLs

    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.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Placitas, New Mexico, USA
    Posts
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    Default Re: Friendly URLs

    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?

  9. #9
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Franklinville, North Carolina, USA
    Posts
    32

    Default Re: Friendly URLs

    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

  10. #10
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Franklinville, North Carolina, USA
    Posts
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    Default Re: Friendly URLs

    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.

 

 

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