Quote:
AlexSolo wrote:
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Maybe easier just to put a redirect in the header of the main index page and leave it at that. Not being paid for all this work.
You're probably right. For future reference, if you do more site conversions, I have converted a number of sites from old static HTML to Xoops, and I do the development right in the main (default) html folder, and no one ever notices until I bring the site live. You just set the site to "closed" except for your webmaster login, and that's only so if someone happens to stumble on www.yoursite.com/index.php-- since index.html takes precedence for visitors to the root folder of the site (www.yoursite.com/), no one really ever would find your site under development, and if they did, they could not register/login and view anything, since the site is closed.
The ONLY possible problem with this is if the html site happens to use a folder called "images" in the root directory. I avoid that by doing a global search and replace on the html files and change that folder to ~images or _images or graphics.
In any case, the only little headache with doing it this way is that clicking the "home" link on your XOOPS site during the dev always brings you back to the html homepage, but I often add a hidden "index.php" link to get me quickly back.
As things are getting wrapped up, I identify any of the html files in the site which are commonly found with search engines and create (but do not yet upload) custom redirects with those exact .html names which redirects to the corresponding new module/page on the dev site, including one for index.html which meta refreshes instantly to index.php.
As soon as the XOOPS site is ready and tested and "opened", I just upload all the new custom redirect html pages to overwrite what is there and "viola!", your site is live, and anyone coming from a search engine to mysite.com/businessdirectory.html is instantly redirected to the new mysite.com/modules/mxdirectory/ for example.
You could also just delete the index.html, and anyone coming to the root directory of the domain would then go directly to your XOOPS site's index.php, but just in case anyone gets a link to the index.html file from a search engine or a linking site, or has mysite.com/index.html in their bookmarks/favorites, I think it's a good idea to have the redirect, but others' may have a different way to deal with this.
In any case, doing it as above completely avoids the problem you were facing above.
Good luck! T
EDIT-- I researched this more and found that refresh metatags have been the source of a lot of abuse, so search engines actually disregard them. Editing the .htaccess file in the root folder is actually a better solution. I just did it on one of my sites, it took 10 minutes, and then I deleted all the old html files. The syntax in the .htaccess file is:
Redirect 301 /bizlist.html http://www.yoursite.com/modules/mxdirectory/
or
Redirect 301 /index.html http://www.yoursite.com/index.php
Great explanation at:
http://www.stevenhargrove.com/redirect-web-pages/
